Las Vegas

[lofter1]

Las Vegas is one of the fastest growing cities in the USA.

This forum will cover various issues about Vegas: where it's going , what it's doing and what it all might mean...

Real Estate: The Village Hits Vegas
Newsweek

Aug. 15, 2005 issue - Vegas has its gondolas. Vegas has its Eiffel Tower. Vegas even has its Celine Dion (blame Canada). But what it doesn't have, says developer Mark Advent, is "a real, organic city center where people can gather." His fix? Build one. And make it just like New York's.

Meet "East Village." Set to open in mid-2007, Advent's 44-acre, $225 million retail complex will give gritty lower Manhattan a very Vegas makeover. What to expect: a "Grand Central" market, a "Meatpacking District" nightlife zone, cops on horseback, surly hot-dog vendors and a "Diamond District," where shoppers, promises Advent, can "haggle for deals." Not that you'd find any of these (mostly midtown) attractions in the actual East Village. Says partner Mark Vlassopulos: "It's an hommage."
Sin City has bitten into the Big Apple before: the glam New York, New York resort, also an Advent creation, opened in 1997. But lately Vegas has ditched uptown glitz for downtown cool. With seminal punk club CBGB facing an Aug. 31 eviction, owner Hilly Kristal is mulling a move to Fremont Street. "The mayor really wants me there," says Kristal, who has photographed each of CBGB's graffitied walls for later reproduction. "Vegas has sought me out." And on Aug. 27, "Avenue Q" (whose puppet protagonists live on N.Y.C.'s fringe) debuts at the new Wynn hotel. The only thing missing? "Outdoor pickle barrels," says Kristal. "Not in that heat."

—Andrew Romano
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.


http://www.lvbusinesspress.com/content/articles/2005/05/24/news/news04.jpg
A rendering of the East Village project that is planned for a site near McCarran International Airport.


BUSINESS PRESS
BY TONY ILLIA

http://www.lvbusinesspress.com/articles/2005/05/24/news/news04.txt

A knockoff of New York City's East Village -- with its own version of the city's Meatpacking District and Washington Square -- is planned for 44 acres at the northwest corner of Tropicana Avenue and Paradise Road.

The 27-building, 959,645-square-foot, retail-office-entertainment complex is being developed by Mark Advent, a developer of the New York-New York hotel-casino.

Its first phase will contain about 17 buildings, ranging from one- to four-stories, and is expected to be completed in 2007. Construction costs could reach $225 million, although no general contractor has been named.

McCarran International Airport owns the land, which is currently zoned for structures with a maximum height of 50 feet. County planners recommend that county commissioners OK the height request.

"It is compatible with the surrounding land uses and with review and approval by Clark County Aviation and the Federal Aviation Administration it should be an asset to the area," reads the agenda item for Wednesday's meeting.

The project consists of 401,045 square feet of retail shops, with a Grand Central Public Market and a possible culinary institute. Roughly 171,900 square feet of space is dedicated to restaurant and dining venues, including bistros, cafes, 24-hour diners, coffee houses and bars.

Additional features call for a 72,700-square-foot conference and banquet center, equipped with high-tech audio-visual and teleconferencing capabilities, available for rent to groups. There is also a 15,400-square-foot offsite airport check-in area with a 4,407-space parking structure.

The multilevel East Village will also house 263,200 square feet of loft-style office space, plus a 1,500-seat theater-in-the-round featuring Swedish magician Joe Labero. A Diamond District, patterned after the one on 48th Street in Manhattan, will contain about 16 different jewelry retailers. The remaining outlets will house mid- to high-end national and regional tenants.

"East Village has been designed as a destination lifestyle and entertainment center," Advent says.

Advent, whose partners include Mark Vlassopulos and Stephen Chen, acquired the 50-year lease on the nearly vacant parcel from Phoenix-based ILX Resorts Inc. for $18 million in 2004.

Beverly Hills-based Canyon Capital Realty Advisors provided a $25 million bridge loan for the acquisition and start-up planning.

CB Richard Ellis' Zack Hussain and Penny Mendlovic are the leasing agents. Rental rates will range from $40- to $46-per-square-foot, triple-net for retail. Office rates have yet to be determined.

"We have had an overflow of interest from retailer amenities for the business district and neighboring event venues," says Mendlovic. "The reaction has been nothing short of phenomenal."


Potemkin East Village coming to Vegas
Friday, July 29, 2005

A Vegas developer is creating a 44-acre East-Village-themed shopping center:

Las Vegas developer Mark Advent's "East Village" retail complex plan, complete with faux Washington Square and an entertainment zone called the "Meat Packing District." But ever since stumbling across this ultimate show of hubris we've been hungering for more. Other than calling it the East Village, what will make the 44-acre commercial playground identifiable as such (CBGB hasn't packed up for there, yet)? Well, if this promotional electronic pamphlet is to be believed, it's a Ray's Pizza, a traffic cop, a hot dog cart and some roadside banners.


Las Vegas' East Village: They Nailed It
Wednesday, July 20, 2005, by Joey

http://www.curbed.com/archives/2005/07/20/las_vegas_east_village_they_nailed_it.php

http://www.curbed.com/archives/2005_7_evlv1.jpg

We've previously pointed out (http://www.curbed.com/archives/2005/05/27/friday_pm_linkage_see_you_tuesday_edition.php) Las Vegas developer Mark Advent's "East Village" retail complex plan, complete with faux Washington Square and an entertainment zone called the "Meat Packing District." But ever since stumbling across this ultimate show of hubris we've been hungering for more. Other than calling it the East Village, what will make the 44-acre commercial playground identifiable as such (CBGB hasn't packed up for there, yet)? Well, if this promotional electronic pamphlet is to be believed, it's a Ray's Pizza, a traffic cop, a hot dog cart and some roadside banners. So alive, this city! More mock-ups and a site map after the jump. Enjoy the erosion of all you hold dear!

http://www.curbed.com/archives/2005_7_evlv2.jpg

http://www.curbed.com/archives/2005_7_evlv3.jpg

http://www.curbed.com/archives/2005_7_evlv4.jpg

[Fabrizio]

Isn´t it funny that the Las Vegas version of these "cool" NY neigborhoods are made up of the kind of buildings that developers in NYC regularly want to tear down? The very buildings that identify NYC as NYC.

Perhaps someday for a taste some of the old neigborhoods we will need to go to theme parks...

[TLOZ Link5]

You have got to be kidding me.

Look at all that parking, also.

[TomAuch]

Maybe CBGB could relocate to Vegas if they are kicked out of the East Village.

[TLOZ Link5]

Maybe CBGB could relocate to Vegas if they are kicked out of the East Village.

If CB wants to sell out, then good riddance.

[lofter1]

Be careful what you ask for...


CBGB Update: Vegas, Baby?

Monday, March 28, 2005, by Lockhart

If CBGB can't find a way to save itself, the next stop may be Las Vegas. Blogger Brooklyn Vegan (http://www.brooklynvegan.com/) finds word in the pages of Metro that the Strip beckons: "Las Vegas here I come,' said Hilly Kristal, the club's owner and manager, if he can't save the club. Kristal also said that the rumors (http://www.curbed.com/archives/2005/03/24/cbgbs_savior_mark_cuban.php) about Mark Cuban saving the club are not true. 'He wants to help out, maybe have a big project on television,' Kristal said."

· CBGB To Move to Vegas? (http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2005/03/cbgb_to_move_to.html)


CBGB to move to Vegas? (http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2005/03/cbgb_to_move_to.html)

[b]March 28, 2005

metro, the free NYC paper that accidentally declared WinneroftheSAT the blog of the day (http://winnerofthesat.blogspot.com/2005/03/welcome-metro-readers.html) recently, reported today that CBGB is considering a move to Vegas.

"'Las Vegas here I come,' said Hilly Kristal, the club's owner and manager, if he can't save the club"

[Kolbster]

Speaking about Las Vegas, Trump is also investing out there, Ivana Trump is the name of the new tower. It is 80 stories (73 of which are residential), it rises 923 feet and has 946 residential units.

Here's the official website
http://www.ivanalasvegas.com/about.htm

Photo Gallery
http://www.ivanalasvegas.com/photos.htm

Fact Sheet
http://www.ivanalasvegas.com/facts.htm

[lofter1]

East Village West

By STEVEN KURUTZ (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=STEVEN KURUTZ&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=STEVEN KURUTZ&inline=nyt-per)
NY Times, August 14, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/nyregion/thecity/14vega.html

CONTRARY to popular belief, Las Vegas is not, in fact, a city where you can find everything. True, you can gorge on prime rib for breakfast or play blackjack at 3 a.m. And not far from the city limits you can engage in the kind of adult activities that have been made illegal in 49 other states. However, according to Mark Advent, a casino developer and Las Vegas resident, something is missing from civic life.

"There's no place where I can stroll around," Mr. Advent said the other day on the phone from Los Angeles International Airport, where he was catching a flight to London. Las Vegas is one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, but, he said, there are no neighborhoods, no pockets, no gathering places. "There's no sense of community, like you have in New York," he said.

And so, in true Las Vegas fashion, Mr. Advent has decided to remedy what he sees as the city's lack of a neighborhood fabric by building one of his own. On the corner of Tropicana Avenue and Paradise Road, on a vacant patch of desert near the airport, will rise East Village, a retail-office-entertainment complex inspired by Manhattan's strollable streets. The $250 million project is tentatively scheduled to open in 2007.

Playing fast and loose with geographical borders, the development will contain a scale model of the Washington Square arch, a meatpacking district and a diamond district, which, as New Yorkers know, is a good 30 blocks north of the East Village. "It's not an exact replica," Mr. Advent explained, adding that the complex was more an homage to great neighborhoods (which explains the part of the development based on Pike Place Market in Seattle). The name, he said, stems from the location, which is one mile east of the Las Vegas strip, and from the fact that "it really is like a little village."

"It has texture," he added. "A tattoo shop, cobblestone streets, a bakery."

As it turns out, Mr. Advent has a bit of a history exporting the streets of Manhattan to the scorched Las Vegas earth. He was the mastermind behind New York-New York, the mammoth casino and hotel that opened on the strip in 1997 and has, among other things, copies of the Chrysler Building and the Statue of Liberty and a SoHo village shopping district. (It does not contain a Ray's Pizza, an attraction that is said to be in consideration this time.)

Mr. Advent had planned to take "Saturday Night Live" to Las Vegas - "restaurants, live entertainment." The head of NBC at the time was less enthusiastic. Then one night, after a couple of martinis, Mr. Advent had a eureka moment: "I thought, let's build all of New York. Let's build the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty - the whole thing." New York-New York was born.

Given his Robert Moses-like ambition and his résumé thus far, one would be forgiven for thinking that Mr. Advent was born in New York. Actually, he comes from a small town in Ohio, which he describes as "Mayberry - one cop car, no stoplight."

Mr. Advent, who is in his mid-40's and has a round, open face, still has the sunny can-do spirit of a Midwesterner. But he maintains an apartment in Westchester, spends about a third of his year in New York and admits to loving what he calls "the whole Village scene."

"I believe New York connotes the best of the best," he said, sounding downright boosterish. "There's a spirit here that's infectious. It's not really about replicating the Statue of Liberty at a third scale. It's the energy and vibe, the whole recipe rolled up into one big dessert. That's why it's such a great platform."

For his latest project, Mr. Advent is determined to build the kind of richly appointed, idiosyncratic structures found throughout Manhattan. Facades will be brick, and in some cases, detailing will be wrought iron. "Other developers keep saying: 'Your buildings aren't square. You've got a pie-shaped building. That's going to cost more,' " Mr. Advent said. "I'm going, yeah, it's a pie-shaped building. When you go to great cities, they build pie-shaped buildings."

Pie-shaped buildings notwithstanding, one questions whether it will be possible for East Village, Las Vegas, to instantly replicate the texture of a neighborhood that has developed over so many decades. According to Denise Scott Brown, an architect and urban planner who is a co-author of the architectural classic "Learning From Las Vegas," all new cities encounter this problem.

"But one thing Las Vegas would have that others might not is a whole lot of money," Ms. Scott Brown said. "With money, you can give a semblance of vitality. You can make it look as if it has a certain worn patina." Still, she said, "It's like putting a small child in some rather large shoes."

Mr. Advent, however, remains convinced that his neighborhood will be a success, so much so that he believes that even New Yorkers will respond to the ersatz version. "I know New Yorkers will want to hang out there," he said. As proof, he cited an attraction meant to remind them of their hometown, or at least to remind them of the tourists who visit their hometown. "We're even going to have the same horse-and-carriage experience as Central Park," he said.

[billyblancoNYC]

Disgraceful.

[pianoman11686]

I just spent a few days in Vegas last week. When I was there, I caught part of a special on CNBC about the ridiculous development there. It really is insane. Trump (the Donald, not Ivana) sold out his International Hotel and Tower, version 5.0 or whatever number it is, in less than a week. Over 1200 units, and they're not exactly cheap. Not only are housing developments consistently expanding the city's reach, but now there are really a lot of high rise projects, mostly condos, planned all along and around the strip. As for the lack of a place to "stroll around", it's nothing unusual. Almost every newer American city faces the same problems. It's all just shopping malls, of the strip or enclosed variety. And there are a lot. Caesars Palace recently finished its expansion of its Forum Shops. Over 150 stores, most of which look like they belong on Fifth Avenue, complete with restaurants, fountains, and blue sky. All indoors. I walked through it, and it seemed suspiciously like a place to "stroll around" in. And there were a lot of people. The stores are among the highest grossing per square foot in the country. There were also hoardes of people, all tourists, packed outside, in the heat, walking along other huge construction projects.

[pianoman11686]

Home on the Strip

By ROBERT JOHNSON

Published: August 17, 2005

LAS VEGAS - Even in this gaudy city a building painted black and pink stands out. It needs to, because the one-floor structure at the corner of the Strip and Sahara Avenue is a condominium sales center in a metropolis where more than 100 new high-rise residences are in the works.

The black-and-pink exterior was designed by the woman who is the namesake of the planned condominium. Victor Altomare, the developer, said simply, "It just screams 'Ivana.' " That would be Ivana Trump, an ex-wife of Donald J. Trump. "Her fingerprints are all over this project," Mr. Altomare said. "Pink is her color."

Although the condo itself, scheduled for groundbreaking in mid-2006 and opening 30 months later, will be a relatively sedate silver color, it will command attention as the tallest skyscraper in Las Vegas. Mr. Altomare estimates construction costs at $500 million. In a telephone interview, Mrs. Trump said she was an investor, but would not be specific about the amount.

The Ivana building "will be elegant," vowed Mrs. Trump, who divides most of her time among homes in New York, London and St.-Tropez. She has lines of clothing, cosmetics and jewelry that are sold on cable television shopping channels and over her Web site, IvanaTrump.com.

Ivana, the building, is to rise 80 floors. Its advertising slogan is "Size Does Matter," a phrase also used to promote the 1998 film "Godzilla," a big-budget production about the fire-breathing lizard that fizzled at the box office. In that movie, the monster destroyed much of Manhattan. In contrast, the Ivana tower and other high rises under development are being hailed as the "Manhattanization" of Las Vegas.

Konnel Peterson, a Re/Max broker who sells mainly condos, said: "Condos, not casinos, are the next big wave of building here. If successful, they'll remake the skyline of this city and recast the Strip from a place to gamble on games to a hub of real estate investment."

The Las Vegas condo market is heating up fast. Some 6,000 units are under construction, compared with about 300 in early 2004, according to Gunther Gedsl, a high-rise analyst at Manhattanization.com in Las Vegas. Another 12,500 units are in the preconstruction sales phase, he said, versus 4,000 as 2004 began.

All that activity, however, is taking its toll on the optimism among some developers. Mr. Gedsl estimated that 12,000 condo units had entered the "idea stage" within the last 18 months. But he added that there had been some erosion in the number of condos in the pipeline "as costs and competition have increased."

How close is Las Vegas to a condo glut? Mr. Gedsl said the glut might already exist. "I think at least 20 percent of those we're hearing about now won't be built," he said.

Mr. Altomare said he had to persuade Mrs. Trump to lend her name to the tower. "She said no, unless it has the right size and scope." He added, "One appeal for her in Las Vegas is to succeed in a 'guy's town.' "

Certainly the size and scope of Ivana, the building, are big enough to compete with one guy in particular: the man she divorced in 1990 after 13 years of marriage.

Mr. Trump, not known for self-deprecation, also has a condo project being built on the Strip. But, planned for 64 floors, his Trump International Hotel and Tower will be smaller than the one named for Mrs. Trump. Still, he swept aside comparisons in a telephone interview.

"Trump International has the right location in the heart of Las Vegas Boulevard," he said, referring to the street more commonly known as the Strip, "near Steve Wynn's new resort and all the glamour that buyers are looking for."

Mr. Trump said that Ivana, the building, may be too far north on the Strip, near the older downtown area of Las Vegas, to be successful. "It's in the wrong place," he said. His development has as a neighbor the Fashion Show Mall, with such stores as Neiman-Marcus. Hers is across the street from a discount store that offers bargains on T-shirts.

Ivana's prices range from $550,000 to a penthouse listed at $35 million. Trump International's units are $800,000 to $8 million.

"Trump International is sold out," Mr. Trump said. "We have 10 percent deposits on all 1,268 units." He added that if some buyers drop out, "We have a long waiting list of people who want to get in."

While the sales center at Ivana is bustling, and Mr. Altomare showed a stack of deposit checks to a visitor, they are for a modest $10,000 each, rather than the 10 percent of the sales price that Mr. Trump said he was receiving in advance.

Still, the Ivana condo was nearly 50 percent sold even before marketing fully started last Sunday with a party attended by Mrs. Trump at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, five miles south of her sales center.

Among those attending the gala was Alyssa Lampert Thomas, a Los Angeles mortgage consultant, who has made a deposit. "This is my first time in Las Vegas," she said, "and I'm really excited about owning a part of a building that Ivana Trump is involved with. She is helping with the design of the interiors, and she has exquisite taste."

One promotion for the building exhibits a certain earthy quality. A press release on July 31 proclaimed, "The Ivana standard of procuring 'only the best' is even reflected in the men that will actually build Ivana Las Vegas."

The announcement invited the wives, girlfriends and sisters of construction workers to submit "your sexiest construction photo" to www.ivanalasvegas.com, in a contest to pick the 12 "hottest construction men in America." They will be featured on a calendar for the tower.

While she was married to Donald Trump, Mrs. Trump was named vice president for interior design of his buildings, including Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, where she supervised construction and later managed the property. She also did a four-year stint as president and chief executive of another Trump property, the Plaza Hotel in New York.

In recent years she has been involved in real estate as a spokeswoman for condo projects in Australia and Miami, but the Las Vegas building is the first to bear her name. "She is definitely a brand, an icon known all over the world," Mr. Altomare said.

Yet brand names have sometimes not been enough in the Las Vegas condo market, where plans for a 46-story building backed by the basketball legend Michael Jordan were scrapped this year in part because of higher-than-expected construction costs.

And, Mr. Trump said, "I'm afraid she is just being used by people who want her name to get something built."

Mrs. Trump had this to say: "I'm glad that Donald is concerned. We're still family even though we're divorced. No one is using me for anything. I'm not the type of person who gets used."

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/08/17/business/ivana.184.jpg

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[lofter1]

Mr. Trump is right -- for now anyway (things change fast in Vegas). The area where Ivana is putting up her tower is fairly low end -- the Stratosphere Casino across the Strip is like a shopping mall with bad Vegas decor (the big attraction there are the 4 thrill rides at the top the the Stratosphere tower).

Call me a pessimist but I believe that Vegas' time will pass very quickly. It is a singularly ugly city (while the desert surrounding Vegas itself is quite stunning). It has inadequate water for the way it is growing (despite what the mayor says). The traffic is fairly horrendous. And the economy is almost completely based on tourists with cash to spend. When the next economic downturn comes it will hit Vegas very, very hard. And all those folks buying these condos will be stuck with a view of the desert and not much more.

[BrooklynRider]

I was only out there once and I didn't enjoy it much. It is nothing in the middle of nowhere.

[lofter1]

Rising Stars on the Strip

About 8,000 condos are under construction in Las Vegas or about to start. But some worry about a real estate bubble bursting.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-vegascondos22aug22,0,6445649.story?coll=la-home-headlines&track=hppromobox

By Jerry Hirsch, Times Staff Writer
August 22, 2005

LAS VEGAS — The boom in high-rise condo projects in this city's canyon of casinos known as the Strip has spawned its own new status symbol — the celebrity resident.

About 8,000 condominium units are under construction or about to start, according to SalesTraq, a Las Vegas real estate information company. It's a building explosion fueled in part by speculators in the torrid real estate market here and the desire of buyers from California and Asia to own a piece of Sin City's action.

But like everything Vegas does, this building bonanza comes with an extra helping of glitz: Developers are using Hollywood stars to make their projects stand out from the more than 100 residential skyscrapers proposed for Las Vegas.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire have purchased units at the Panorama Towers complex. Jessica Simpson has reserved a unit at Palms Place, the 50-story high-rise planned at the Palms Hotel and Casino. Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson has snagged a spot at the Icon Las Vegas.

"I am sure these celebrities are getting very good deals," said Peter Dennehy, senior vice president of Sullivan Group Real Estate Advisors in San Diego. "It is a marketing thing. People want to live near the stars."

But some analysts wonder if the market will be left with a Las Vegas-sized hangover in the form of a real estate bubble fueled by the large number of speculators — estimated to be as high as 40% — who never intend to live in the units they are buying. The high-rise condo market has proved to be particularly sensitive to market gyrations, said Delores Conway, a USC real estate economist.

Las Vegas isn't the only town that is going vertical. High-rise living, a long-standing tradition in New York, has spread to the likes of Boston, Denver, Miami, San Francisco and Kansas City, Mo. At least half a dozen new condo towers are planned for Los Angeles, Irvine and Pasadena.

Nationally, the number of condominium and town home development construction starts jumped 38% to 120,000 last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And that came on top of a 23% gain in the previous year.

"Cities across the United States are booming with these projects and many of the developments are quite spectacular," said Max Neiman, senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.

Many of the buildings are following the pattern of Miami, where residential towers offer luxury-hotel-style amenities such as concierge service, valet parking, restaurants, fitness centers and spas. Some developments are tailored to unique markets. Cristalla, a 22-story high-rise residential tower in downtown Seattle, will feature a rooftop dog park. Much of the demand "is coming from people who want to live in convenient urban settings, near bookstores, jazz clubs, theaters and good restaurants," Neiman said.

However, with so many high-end properties on the drawing board, it's easy for a development to get lost in the crowd. That's where the celebrities come in, assuming the real estate equivalent of a walk-on role: Most aren't investors in projects, but their presence gives condo buyers the hope of an occasional star sighting near the mailboxes.

Don't expect anything so crass as celebrity advertising endorsements; Vegas developers prefer the subtle approach, placing tidbits in gossip columns and prominently displaying celeb glamour shots in sales offices.

"It makes a building cool and hip," said Dennehy, the real estate consultant. "You always want to sell lifestyle when you are selling condo projects like these."

There are familiar names behind some projects, too. Donald Trump is building the Trump International Hotel & Tower at the north end of the Strip. And not to be outdone by her ex, Ivana Trump plans the eponymous Ivana Las Vegas 82-story development nearby.

Typically, high-rise condo buyers are empty nesters who no longer want to maintain a 2,500-square-foot home in the suburbs, said Ross DeVol, a Milken Institute economist.

"There are 80 million baby boomers, most in their 50s, and that's a big market," DeVol said.

Other buyers are young urban professionals without children who want to live in what they consider marquee areas, DeVol said.

Even in Las Vegas, once one of the more affordable real estate markets, no one considers these condos to be cheap housing.

A 972-square-foot one-bedroom unit at Icon Las Vegas, the future Reggie Jackson hangout that Related Cos. is building, starts north of $600,000.

"If one of these condos were in the $300,000s, I might do it. It would be nice to be just minutes from work," said Chris Dingell, a senior planner with Clark County. "But I can't afford what they are asking for the units on the Strip."

But for those with the money, the towers, with their luxury amenities and chic granite-and-wood fixtures, hold an allure even at prices that range from $500 to $1,000 a square foot.

"With the poker boom, I find myself spending at least three months a year in Vegas and we needed a home there," said Barry Greenstein, a Rancho Palos Verdes resident and professional poker player.

Greenstein paid $1.2 million for a 2,300-square-foot unit on the 16th floor of the first Panorama tower because of its proximity to the Bellagio, where he won $215,969 in a World Poker Tour no-limit Texas hold 'em event last year.

"Some of the other high-stakes players are moving into that building, so we will have a little community there," he said.

Although his job is unusual, Greenstein is typical of many who are plunking down 20% deposits for Las Vegas condo units. Few are eager to call the Strip their permanent home.

"I plan to go every couple of months. Although I am not a gambler, I enjoy the excitement of the city," said Doug McCafferty, a real estate broker who lives in Dana Point. He purchased a $346,500 studio unit at the Residences, a joint project between high-rise builder Turnberry Associates and MGM Mirage at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino.

McCafferty bought into the project's first tower, which opens next year and sold out in just 90 days. The Residences has sold out a planned second tower and half the units in a third.

"There seems to be an insatiable demand for condominiums in Las Vegas right now and it hasn't slowed," said Marty Burger, who heads the Las Vegas operations for New York-based real estate developer Related Cos.

A veteran of 35 projects in greater Miami, Related quickly peddled all 248 units in its planned Icon tower between the Strip and the Los Vegas Convention Center. Business was so good that the company has launched a second tower and has sold all but 100 of its 268 units well before it will break ground.

Donald Trump's 1,283-unit condominium project sold out in just five days after it was announced in December.

Burger said that as much as 60% of the buyers at the Icon tower were Californians purchasing vacation homes. But he and other developers concede that a large percentage are real estate brokers and other speculators attempting to lock up positions with the expectation that they can resell at a profit.

Janine Hogg, a San Francisco Bay Area transplant who owns a smoothie shop in the Las Vegas suburb of Summerlin, has placed down payments on four condos in three projects and is considering purchasing a fifth.

"Real estate investments are my retirement strategy," Hogg said. "Hopefully I am not gauging the market wrong."

Las Vegas real estate analyst John Restrepo estimates that speculators such as Hogg make up as much as 40% of the market. This has prompted some of the projects to limit purchases to one per person and to require buyers to close escrow before allowing a unit to be resold.

The number of investors in the Las Vegas condo market should be a matter of concern to both developers and other buyers, said Conway of USC.

"Las Vegas prices are not going to go up forever," she said, "and when the market shifts, a percentage of speculators like that is enough to change the price of all the units in the building."

Speculators tend to liquidate their positions quickly if their investments are losing money or aren't producing the expected returns, Conway said, sending prices tumbling.

However, some real estate experts say the unique nature of the Las Vegas market helps insulate it from the type of steep downturn seen in other markets.

The city is running out of developable land, and people continue to pour into the region, said Steve Bottfeld, an analyst with the local research firm Marketing Solutions.

The Las Vegas metropolitan area had a population of 1 million in 1997 and that's expected to double by 2007, he said. That influx provides a steady supply of buyers, which is what the speculators are counting on.

Moreover, with 38 million visitors annually, the city remains one of the nation's top vacation destinations and will maintain its attraction for second-home buyers, Bottfeld said.

Finally, no one expects all the projects on the books to get built.

"There's not enough skilled labor in this town to build even half of what has been proposed," said Richard Lee, a vice president in the Las Vegas office of First American Title Co.

Even more circumspect is developer Irwin Molasky, whose Park Towers opened in 2001, demonstrating that Las Vegas was a prime market for luxury high-rise condos.

"I don't think more than 25% or 30% of the proposed projects will get built," he said. "Building these high-rises are not for the faint of heart."

Indeed, even star power won't guarantee every venture success. The proliferation of projects forced Chicago real estate developer Diversified Real Estate Concepts Inc. to scuttle plans for Aqua Blue, an 825-unit high-rise near the Strip, even though it had signed basketball superstar Michael Jordan to license an athletic center and two namesake restaurants.

[TallGuy]

"Call me a pessimist but I believe that Vegas' time will pass very quickly. It is a singularly ugly city (while the desert surrounding Vegas itself is quite stunning). It has inadequate water for the way it is growing (despite what the mayor says). The traffic is fairly horrendous. And the economy is almost completely based on tourists with cash to spend. When the next economic downturn comes it will hit Vegas very, very hard. And all those folks buying these condos will be stuck with a view of the desert and not much more."

Wrong! Vegas is quickly becoming a low-cost high tech manufacturing and design town. It is sucking much of what remains of the Southern California electronics industry out of that area and into Vegas, with its' low tax rate and cheap labor market. Behind the glitz and glamour of the touris industry is a startling boom of non-gaming related industry.

[pianoman11686]

New $1.5 Billion Cosmopolitan Resort & Casino Planned for Vegas
Casino will offer extensive retail and entertainment in addition to gaming

http://www.ecpzone.com/article/article.jsp?siteSection=33&id=608

PR Newswire
As Las Vegas pushes skyward, the new $1.5 billion Cosmopolitan Resort & Casino pushes to "the Boulevard." By placing retail at its front door, this luxury, mixed-use high-rise creates a stunning architectural design that boldly addresses an emerging trend in Las Vegas -- where a tourist's primary vacation purpose is shopping, dining and entertainment.

Scheduled to break ground in Summer 2005, The Cosmopolitan's focus on retail stems from the developer's Manhattan and Miami roots, where retail opens onto Park Avenue or Ocean Drive with transparent "floor-to-ceiling" window displays that capture the attention of tourists and visitors alike. To date, no other resort has integrated retail and dining in such a manner.

"Unlike Las Vegas' traditional property design, we're placing retail at the front door," said Ian Bruce Eichner, CEO of 3700 Associates, LLC, the developer of The Cosmopolitan. "The nature of The Cosmopolitan's design places shopping and dining at the threshold of our property. This new Las Vegas paradigm allows restaurants and shops direct exposure to Las Vegas Boulevard to brand their product to the millions of people that travel along the Strip," Eichner said.

Centrally located at the heart of Las Vegas Boulevard, next to Bellagio, The Cosmopolitan is a modern yet visionary mixed-use development that encapsulates luxury and sophistication in its integration of a condo-hotel-resort featuring hotel rooms, condo-hotel residences, a casino, retail, dining and entertainment venues, meeting rooms, and The Cosmo Beach Club -- all in one location and under-one-roof.

"We've designed The Cosmopolitan to capture the aura and excitement found only in famous, metropolitan cities," said David Friedman, President of 3700 Associates, LLC. "Our vertical, urban design harnesses the kinetic energy and chic lifestyle that make Las Vegas one of the country's most sought after shopping and dining destinations," said Friedman.

The Cosmopolitan has begun leasing 300,000 sq. ft. of retail and restaurant space built-to-the-sidewalk on three separate levels overlooking Las Vegas Boulevard. The space is divided between 170,000 sq. ft. of prime retail space, housing between 45 and 50 retail stores and boutique tenants, and 130,000 sq. ft. of restaurants and lounges each with panoramic balcony views of The Strip.

"Targeted tenants include proven successful retailers and restaurateurs from other evolved shopping and dining destinations such as New York, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, and Chicago in the US, as well as London, Paris, Barcelona, and Milan abroad," said Jim Reding, director of retail for 3700 Associates, LLC.

"Retail stores and restaurants will be vertically integrated into the mixed-use luxury of The Cosmopolitan," said Reding. "Unlike other retail opportunities, The Cosmopolitan's critical mass of internal attractors ranging from approximately 3,000 hotel and condo-hotel rooms, a 75,000 sq. ft. casino, an 1,800 seat theater, 150,000 sq. ft. of meeting rooms, a 3,800 space underground parking garage, the five acre Cosmo Beach Club, and a combined 300,000 sq. ft. of retail shops and restaurants equip the Cosmopolitan with all of the attributes to be the most successful retail center, in terms of sales per square foot, in the world," said Reding.

http://www.condohotelcenter.com/images/alerts/Cosmo-rendering.jpg

http://www.condohotelcenter.com/images/alerts/Cosmo-rendering3.jpg

[pianoman11686]

Starwood to Build $1.7B Las Vegas Project

By ADAM GOLDMAN, Associated Press Writer
Tue Aug 23, 5:26 PM ET

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050823/ap_on_bi_ge/starwood_vegas_4

LAS VEGAS - Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. intends to expand dramatically in Las Vegas, bringing its hip and urban W brand to one of the most competitive and coveted markets in the leisure industry.

Starwood is joining with Edge Resorts, a group of private investors, in a $1.7 billion project that will involve a mix of approximately 3,000 hotel and residential units and a 75,000-square-foot casino, along with 300,000 square feet of meeting space and additional shops. It's slated to open 2008.

Edge Resorts will control 75 percent of the project. Starwood, which is W's parent company, will own the remainder and manage the W Las Vegas hotel.

The project will sit on 21 acres located just east of the Las Vegas Strip, near to the popular Hard Rock hotel-casino.

"The other properties will orbit around us," Ross Klein, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for W Hotels Worldwide, told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.

Klein said he has been trying to bring one of the sleek and modern hotels to Las Vegas since the launching of the first W in late 1998. Klein said W customers have been clamoring for one in Las Vegas but he could never find the perfect location, partner, timing and scale.

"It was very important for us to go where our guests want to be," he said.

With Las Vegas gambling companies still churning out hefty profits, Klein said the market is "still red hot and white hot for innovation. W Las Vegas will definitely be a laboratory for a lot of what we are doing."

Klein said he expects the new resort to compete with the Hard Rock, Mandalay Bay, the Palms, Wynn Las Vegas and Four Seasons.

Deutsche Bank analyst Marc Falcone said it was important for W to finally land in Las Vegas.

"I think W needs exposure in Vegas given what the brand stands for," he said. "It's going to be a strong fit for Las Vegas. This is a very powerful location."

Edge Resorts investors Trevor Pearlman, Reagan Silber and Adam Frank said they weren't concerned about the glut of hotel-condo projects slated to be built in Las Vegas.

"The W brand is obviously one of the strongest names in the hospitality business," said Frank, Edge president. "The Vegas buyer of condos has become more savvy."

New York-based Starwood, one of the biggest hotel operators in the world, is also part of a group of investors that bought the Aladdin megaresort on the Strip. It also owns the Westin Casuarina in Las Vegas.

Starwood shares rose 50 cents to close at $60.35 in trading on the New York Stock Exchange

[pianoman11686]

Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

PROJECT CITYCENTER: Strip `metropolis' planned

MGM Mirage development will bring 12,000 jobs

By HUBBLE SMITH
REVIEW-JOURNAL

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Nov-10-Wed-2004/news/25221232.html

MGM Mirage unveiled plans Tuesday for a 66-acre development on the Strip, between the Bellagio and Monte Carlo hotels. The 18 million-square-foot first phase of the project calls for a 4,000-room hotel and casino, three 400-room boutique hotels, 1,650 luxury condominium-hotel units and 550,000 square feet of retail, dining and entertainment space.

"I can't think where there is an opportunity (anywhere else) in the United States to create a world-class market," Murren said. "We have all the elements. We have the land, the intellectual and financial capabilities and the imagination of the private sector and government."

"Our master plan represents a significant new direction for our city and our company," Terry Lanni, chairman and chief executive officer for MGM Mirage, said in a prepared statement. "Las Vegas has taken initial steps to becoming a major urban center in the western United States."

Project CityCenter would be the most significant privately funded project in the United States, Murren said, creating more than 12,000 permanent positions, the largest single new employment opportunity in the history of Las Vegas, upon completion.

The first phase, which is expected to cost between $3 billion and $4 billion, would create more than 7,000 construction jobs.

MGM Mirage has been working for eight months on development plans for the site that extends from the Boardwalk casino property to the edge of Bellagio, across Harmon Avenue.

Murren said the company has been analyzing the property since MGM Grand Inc. acquired Mirage Inc. in 2000 with the intent of maximizing the economic value of the land, which is going for about $20 million an acre on the Strip.

"This site is probably the best developable opportunity in Las Vegas, maybe the planet," he said. "We believe the economic opportunity is there to get a return on investment that's superior to simply building a casino-hotel."

The project is dramatic in scale and, over time, will be developed into a master-planned urban complex. Although the completed project will be built on less land than the 110-acre MGM Grand property, the higher density design will allow for much more building space.

Murren said the development will propel the urbanization of the Las Vegas Valley and complement previously announced plans for continuing downtown redevelopment.

"We really want to create a social fabric akin to other urban markets," he said. "I look at it like Manhattan. Manhattan has got zones: uptown, east side. Real cities have a variety of districts and neighborhoods and that's what we need to make this a major metropolitan market."

MGM Mirage will partner with world-renowned architects, residential developers, hotel operators and retailers in designing, financing and operating the project.

The company selected the master plan design by Ehrenkrantz, Eckstut and Kuhn Architects, a New York-based firm known for planning Battery Park in New York City and the Baltimore Inner Harbor East in Maryland.

Bill Eadington, professor of economics at the University of Nevada, Reno and director of the school's Institute for the Study of Gaming and Commercial Gaming, said the MGM Mirage project shows the continuing trend toward nongaming activity on the Strip.

"One of the things worth watching is the increasing importance of other departments to generate income," he said. "For example, The Venetian has significant revenue from hotel rooms, convention business, restaurants.

"If you look at gaming revenue, growth has been pretty marginal for the Strip because nongaming has become a more integral part of the whole mix."

Among properties with $72 million or more in annual income, gaming made up 42.4 percent of total revenue last year, compared with 57.7 percent 10 years ago. By contrast, gaming in Atlantic City casinos accounts for about 80 percent of revenue.

"The point is, especially in light of continued expansion of generic gaming elsewhere, Las Vegas has a great challenge to redefine itself," Eadington said.

MGM Mirage management will immediately initiate the design stage of Project CityCenter, which is expected to take 18 months.

Construction of the first phase will take about 42 months, with an anticipated opening in 2010.

Murren said a project of this scope should be prudently implemented over time in phases, though the first phase would be the most significant. The second phase is expected to entail about 2,500 residential units.

Bill Thompson, a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas who specializes in gaming, said the "psychology" of Las Vegas' gaming industry is to grow and grow until it busts, which has yet to happen.

"With (Steve) Wynn's expansion today and we're going to have other things too, I think we'll just keep growing. That's the way we play the game," Thompson said.

"We're very pro-growth. I don't think we fear it. It hasn't been boom and bust, it's been boom and slow down, boom and slow down."

The latest announcement from MGM Mirage makes Thompson wonder how serious the company is about expanding into England.

"I don't think they're going to put big bucks in other locations. This is where the action is," he said.

http://www.homesparadise.com/homes/nevada/las-vegas/project-citycenter/CityCenter275.jpe

http://www.lasvegassun.com/from.ed/2005/apr/12/photos/P000069572.jpg

[BrooklynRider]

When does the water run out in Las Vegas?

[lofter1]

The mayor of LV continues to claim that the water will never be a problem. (?!?!)

Colorado River levels are at their lowest point in years (so low that areas covered over by water when the Glen Canyon Dam was built in the 60's are now exposed for the first time in 40 years). Arizona, California & Nevada are re-negotating over who gets how much water from the Colorado, as the original formulas were based upon numbers from a period that turns out to have had the largest rainfall in 500 years (rendering pointless the previous models that were used to determine the water available for the southwest).

[Spine]

Here is a new Las Vegas project. The design is by Arquitectonica and George Clooney is one of the developers.

http://www.lasramblasvegas.com/


http://www.webo.com/renderings/las-ramblas.jpg

[NewYorkYankee]

I really like it! I like almost all of the vegas projects! Need some of them in NY!

[lofter1]

I really like it! I like almost all of the vegas projects! Need some of them in NY!
Yeah, sure ... that floating pool suspended over a NYC sidewalk would be a HUGE hit!

[lofter1]

Another HUGE ($5 Billion !!!!) project for Vegas...

Mirage readies team for Vegas project

Wednesday, September 14, 2005 · Last updated 7:17 p.m. PT
By ADAM GOLDMAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/apbiz_story.asp?category=1310&slug=MGM%20Mirage%20CityCenter

LAS VEGAS -- MGM Mirage officials have assembled a who's-who list of architects for its $5 billion CityCenter project that the company hopes not only transforms the Strip into an urban hub but sets a new international design standard.

Names like Rafael Vinoly, Norman Foster, James KM Cheng and Cesar Pelli, the architect behind the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, will handle the design elements of the massive project, which includes a 60-story, 4,000-room hotel-casino, two boutique hotels and 1,640 luxury condos.

MGM Mirage Inc. Chairman Terry Lanni and other company executives envision the Strip evolving into a Park Avenue one day, where people live and work and not just gamble and leave. The CityCenter is required if Las Vegas wants to continue attracting visitors, Lanni said.

"You bring excitement and you bring people," Lanni said in an interview Wednesday. "If you just end up building more rooms, that's bad for Las Vegas. Once again, it will be a reason to come to Las Vegas. If it isn't, it will be a failure."

To achieve its vision, the world's second-largest gambling company with annual revenues of more than $7 billion has brought together some of the most prominent architects and designers.

Lanni described the group as the top picks in their field.
"It's like the NFL draft, and we got the first 10 choices," he said.

Vinoly handled such projects as the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.

Pelli will be the lead architect on the hotel-casino and Vinoly will design another tower consisting of condo-hotel units. Cheng is known for his residential towers in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Foster, a winner of the prestigious Pritzker architecture prize, will also have a hand in the 18 million-square-foot CityCenter. He'll design one of five towers that will dwarf the neighboring Bellagio resort, a 3.6 million-square-foot property also owned by MGM Mirage.

Company officials say CityCenter is the largest privately financed development in the country.

The project is expected to open in late 2009 and sit on 66 acres between the Monte Carlo and Bellagio resorts. It will employ an estimated 12,000 people.

---

On the Net:

http://www.mgmmirage.com (http://www.mgmmirage.com/)

[pianoman11686]

Making the Desert Bloom With Architecture

By ROBIN POGREBIN

Published: September 15, 2005

In a powerful reminder that big-name architects have become big business, the casino operator MGM Mirage has enlisted a celebrity roster - Rafael Viñoly, Lord Norman Foster, James KM Cheng, Cesar Pelli, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates - to design various parts of a $5 billion, 66-acre development in the heart of Las Vegas.

Called Project CityCenter, the complex of hotels, casinos, retail and residential space is to be built by November 2009 on a site between the Monte Carlo and Bellagio hotels on the city's famous strip. MGM Mirage plans to announce the architectural team at a news conference today.

At 18 million square feet - about the same size as Rockefeller Center, SoHo and Times Square combined - the project is described by the company as the largest privately financed development in the country.

Taking Las Vegas's recent surge in residential development to a new level, the steel-and-glass project will inject a more urban sensibility into the strip's sprawling theme-park aesthetic. It also reflects a growing consciousness among developers that many people want to live in high-profile buildings.

"Buyers love that," said Bobby Baldwin, chief executive officer of Mirage Resorts. "They love the fact that they're living in a Rafael Viñoly building."

In New York, for example, the architects Richard Meier, Zaha Hadid, Steven Holl, Charles Gwathmey, Santiago Calatrava and Enrique Norten have recently added their designs to the skyline.

Whether the MGM Mirage project signals a shift in Las Vegas from gaudy architecture to tall and sleek modern towers remains to be seen. But architects say that either way, it will be a new architectural chapter for the city.

"The Las Vegas we studied in the 1960's is long, long gone," said Denise Scott Brown, the architect and urban planner who with Robert Venturi wrote "Learning From Las Vegas" (1972), a seminal work on signage in Las Vegas and its effect on the city's architectural vernacular. "They have gone back to the industrial revolution - steel and glass."

Asked if she thought the city's signature glitz and kitsch would be missed, she replied: "Take away the decoration and the neon and you leave the beauty and purity of a modern building. I don't know how many takers you will have, even if there is a great name attached to it."

Mr. Viñoly, too, said he was unsure whether the project would draw tenants from outside the city. "It's a hideout place where everything is suspended in this sort of moment of fantasy," he said of Las Vegas. "It's a Disneyland for grown-ups."

Mr. Viñoly said he was still getting used to working there. "Everything else around is the un-architecture," he said. "It's a cartoon; it's a horror show. But it is something that is interesting to see. It's an education."

Typically architects draw inspiration from the environment around a building site. Not in this case. "We are taking this as a clean slate," Mr. Pelli said. "There is nothing much there you can refer to."

The developers want CityCenter to stand out in the Las Vegas landscape. "It has to be distinctive and it has to be more urban and it has to feel contemporary," said Terry Lanni, the chairman and chief executive of MGM Mirage.

Each of the architects involved was given wide latitude to come up with their designs, although they must ultimately work together. "They were free to express themselves, in almost an unlimited fashion," Mr. Baldwin said.

"We did throttle them back a little if they went too far," he continued. "One of the residential towers was too strong in contrast to the large casino-hotel. We wanted it to look like a neighbor, not a building that is trying to outdo every other building in CityCenter."

Stanton Eckstut, the founding principal of Ehrenkrantz, Eckstut & Kuhn Architects, which created the master plan, says the complex is intended to feel like an authentic city center, with supermarkets and sidewalks. "It will be a real urban district of variety and complexity that borrows from traditional cities," he said. Although there is ample free parking, he added, "walking is stressed throughout."

Mr. Lanni noted that "Las Vegas has never had a center or a core." But, he continued, "By having iconic architects of world-renowned fame, we believe we have an opportunity to make a place people accept as the center of Las Vegas."

In committing itself to such an ambitious project, MGM Mirage is betting that Las Vegas will continue its recent trend of attracting new residents. MGM Mirage said that a study it commissioned by McKinsey & Company confirmed that the number of residents is increasing more rapidly than the number of visitors.

High-rise condominiums are going up all along the strip, a growth spurt fueled by the city's new high-end restaurants, Broadway theater imports and luxury stores.

Donald J. Trump is building a 64-story condominium hotel. Three 576-unit condominiums in which MGM Mirage is a partner have sold quickly at rates ranging from $800 to $1,000 a square foot.

Mr. Pelli, the architect responsible for the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, is to be the lead architect on the CityCenter project, designing a 60-story, 4,000-room hotel and casino.

Mr. Viñoly, who designed the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, is to design a 1,000-unit residential hotel tower.

Mr. Cheng, perhaps best known for his work in Vancouver, British Columbia, is to design a 100-unit residential tower.

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, which was to design a new Jets stadium, is to design the exterior architecture for one of two 400-room non-gambling hotels.

Based in London, Lord Foster, responsible for the Swiss Re building and the redesigned Reichstag, is to handle the exterior of the other, which is to be operated by the Light Group, creators of the Light and Caramel nightclubs at the Bellagio. The project also includes about 500,000 square feet of retail shops, dining and entertainment spaces and 1,640 units of luxury condominiums.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/09/15/arts/15casi.650.jpg
A design scheme for Project CityCenter in Las Vegas, a 66-acre development on the strip.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[TLOZ Link5]

Crazy.

[BrooklynRider]

Gosh, I hated Vegas. It's a lot of nothing.

[TLOZ Link5]

I went once; once was enough for the time being. I think I'll go back in ten years or so, after a lot of these projects have been completed.

[lofter1]

We'll have to wait and see about the architectural merits of this joint.

Meanwhile ...


Betting on the Studs

Madam Heidi Fleiss is back—
and building an all-male bordello in the desert.
Is even Nevada ready for this?

By Steve Friess
Newsweek
Dec. 12, 2005 issue

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10313009/site/newsweek/from/RSS/


http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Sections/Newsweek/Components/Photos/Mag/051212_Issue/051203_FleissBrothel_hsmall.widec.jpg
Men's Workout Magazine / Courtesy of
Lester James Brandt (left); Paul Skipper / AP

Lady’s Choice: Fleiss (right) has been flooded
with applicants like Brandt, her first hire

Standing on a desolate stretch of property dotted with sagebrush and litter 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas, former Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss surveys the sexual frontier. She's sketching out her vision for Heidi's Stud Farm, the country's first legal brothel serving female customers. This pleasure palace will be shaped like a castle, with a marble-floored great room, a spa, a sex-toy shop and secluded bungalows where 20 Casanovas will spend quality time with the clientele (at $250 an hour).

But Fleiss may not be welcome in these parts. As a convicted felon—she served time in prison in the late '90s on charges stemming from her high-priced call-girl operation in L.A.—Fleiss may find it difficult to get a license. And some owners of the state's legal bordellos (where rates range from several hundred to several thousand dollars, depending on the activities) worry that Fleiss's business could give Nevada's religious conservatives ammunition to get prostitution outlawed altogether.

"Heidi Fleiss scares the hell out of me," says George Flint, lobbyist for the Nevada Brothel Association, which represents some of the state's 26 legal houses of ill repute, most of them dressed-up doublewides with names like the Chicken Ranch and the Cherry Patch. "Our industry is not so firm, so to speak, that we need to flirt with some secondary activity that could bring down the whole house of cards." Because the brothel laws all refer to prostitutes as "she" and require cervical STD tests for sex workers, Fleiss would need to get the statutes reworded to cover her studs. Richard Ziser, president of the conservative group Nevada Concerned Citizens, warns: "She may bring enough publicity to cause a problem for the industry."

It takes a tough hide to be a Nevada madam, and Fleiss, 39, certainly has one. "What I want to do is only good for the brothel industry here. I'm Heidi Fleiss. I know this business better than anyone in the world." If Nevada lawmakers try to run her back across the state line, Fleiss says she's primed for a legal fight, on grounds that the state's existing laws discriminate against men. "What's good for the goose should be good for the gander," she says. Even when her business partner, a prominent Nevada brothel owner, backed out last month, Fleiss vowed to forge ahead. She's vague about the funding for her $1.5 million sexual fantasyland, but she says she has other investors. And she just landed a six-figure deal with HBO to let a film crew document the brothel's birth.

More than 1,000 would-be lotharios have already contacted Fleiss seeking employment. She hasn't formalized an application process, but she says she won't be testing the merchandise. "I just have to get a feeling that women would like the guy, that he would treat her the way she wants to be treated," she says. She's already picked her first bachelor: former soap-opera star Lester James Brandt, 37, whom she met last month at a Los Angeles storage facility while she was loading up her moving van to head to Nevada.

"I've been following the guide to how to be an actor all this time. But I never got the big break," Brandt says. "Then I met Heidi and I thought, 'I'm gonna try something different'."

Will Brandt and his brethren have the stamina for this kind of work? "With female prostitutes, they can see five, 10, even more clients in a day," says Debbie Rivenburgh, manager of the Chicken Ranch in Pahrump, Nev. "I don't know how men could keep up with that"—even with Viagra. Others wonder if the clientele exists for such a brothel—especially one that's an hour-and-a-half ride from the Las Vegas Strip. "What self-respecting woman would drive that far for sex when it's so easy to find here in Vegas?" asks Jessica Martini, 28, of Houston, standing in line last week to buy tickets to "Thunder From Down Under," a male-stripper revue. But Fleiss says she can create an exotic, unique experience: perfect for bachelorette parties or for women wanting uncomplicated, STD-free hookups. "I have heard from very wealthy, very beautiful women who say they'll be first in line," Fleiss says.

For the time being, Fleiss plans to cater to women only (shall we call the johns janes, and the cathouse a doghouse?). But she says she may target the gay market next. She could be forced to: Nevada lawmaker David Parks, who is gay, plans to ask for a legal opinion this month on whether Fleiss would be violating the state's anti-bias law by letting only women hire her studs. "You gotta take these things one step at a time," Fleiss says. "These things don't happen overnight." Well, some things do.


© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

[stache]

It also seems to be a white flight type area (like Phoenix) for people from So Calif. Plus it's cheaper.

[lofter1]

Calatrava Malmo tower planned for Las Vegas

valencialife.net (http://www.valencialife.net/)
December 5, 2005

http://www.thinkspain.com/news-spain/10042

Photo: http://www.thinkspain.com/news/ReduceImgWidthQuality.asp?foto=foto10042.jpg&width=400&faldon=no


It has been revealed that the famous Turning Torso apartment building designed by Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava for the City of Malmo in Sweden, will also be built in the United States.

A construction company has expressed an interested in building two Turning Torsos in Las Vegas. These two new towers will be 250 metres high as opposed to the 190 metres of the Malmo building (photo).

MGM Mirage, who already owns a large number of hotels and casinos, is handling the new project. According to one Swedish newspaper, directors of MGM Mirage have already been in contact with Mr. Calatrava for the project, but his office in Valencia has not yet confirmed that negotiations are under way.

[TLOZ Link5]

Is there no end to Vegas' excess?

[lofter1]

Those Vegasites (Vegasians? Vegasinos? Vegasers?) are just getting started.

We ain't seen nuthin' ... yet

[TLOZ Link5]

Not at least until the water runs out.

[lofter1]

^ Speaking of which ...

Las Vegas Nearing Its Water Allotment From the Colorado

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
New York Times
December 11, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/national/11vegas.html


LAS VEGAS, Dec. 10 (AP) - The booming Las Vegas area's water demands could outstrip the region's share of the Colorado River by 2007, according to the 2006 water budget approved by the Southern Nevada Water Authority board this week.

Kay Brothers, the water authority's deputy general manager, called that timeline a worst-case situation, adding that through conservation and careful planning the state could stretch its share of the river water beyond 2007.

But Ms. Brothers acknowledged that the day was coming when southern Nevada would no longer be able to depend on its allotment from the river, which currently supplies 90 percent of the area's drinking water.

She said the annual budgets were based on separate projections from each of the authority's member agencies, projections that "tend to be conservative."

The water authority has had to come up with backup resources. The 2006 plan approved with the agency's budget on Thursday outlines some of those options. They include about 290,000 acre-feet of groundwater stored beneath the Las Vegas Valley, 30,000 acre-feet banked with California and an agreement with Arizona that guarantees Nevada 1.25 million acre-feet of water over the next 30 years.

There are 325,851 gallons in an acre-foot, which is nearly enough water to supply two Las Vegas households for one year.

The water authority already plans to build a $2 billion pipeline to pump groundwater from basins in rural Nevada. Officials also hope to use water from the Virgin and Muddy Rivers.

A 1922 compact and several later agreements divided use of the Colorado River among seven states. Efforts to change the deal have led to fights in the nation's courts.


Copyright 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html)The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[Peakrate212]

Any news on Ivana Condo?

[Peakrate212]

VEGAS HOUSING MARKET SWOLLEN ANOTHER big condo project in the Las Vegas desert has turned into a mirage. The latest to shutter its sales office is Icon, a 500-plus unit development that was to have included two 48-story towers. Icon's developer, Related Las Vegas, an offshoot of the Manhattan-based Re lated Cos., has already pulled out of another, 61-acre property in down town Vegas. With as many as 50,000 new con dos in various stages of construction, the Vegas housing market has swelled beyond its sat uration point, accord ing to local builders. Last month, we re ported the company's planned Las Ramblas complex, which includes partners George Clooney and Rande Gerber, was on the ropes. "They tried to bite off more than they could chew," Vegas insider Jack Wishna, a partner in Donald Trump's develop ment, told The Post's Braden Keil. So far, residences by Ivana Trump and Mi chael Jor dan have also bombed.

[TonyO]

WSJ
1/13/06

Some Developers Scrap Luxury Condos in Las Vegas

THE ICON LAS VEGAS was supposed to be a classic luxury condominium building, featuring valet parking, a pool with cabanas and views of the Vegas Strip. Reggie Jackson, the Hall of Fame slugger, bought a three-bedroom unit listed for $800,000.

But last week the project, which would have included two towers with 48 stories each, was scrapped before construction could begin. The developers, a joint venture of East Coast real-estate tycoons Stephen M. Ross and Jorge Perez, are returning deposits to about 350 buyers.

The Icon isn't the only Las Vegas luxury high-rise encountering trouble. The fates of five condo projects are uncertain and three have been canceled in the past year, according to Applied Analysis, a Las Vegas real-estate research firm.

Meanwhile, some of the splashiest projects with celebrity status, like a condo tower named after Ivana Trump and a development backed by actor George Clooney, are being sold and revamped, respectively.

After two years of glitzy marketing, developers and real-estate brokers are discovering that Sin City's luxury condo market isn't as easy to navigate as they expected. Demand isn't as strong as some developers thought and construction costs have quickly outpaced their plans.

"Developers came in and completely overestimated the demand," says Irwin Molasky, whose Molasky Group of Cos. built one of the first high-rise luxury condo developments in Las Vegas, called Park Towers, which opened about four years ago. For now, he has no plans to build more luxury condos because he says there's too little demand and too much proposed supply.

"This is not New York. This is not Miami. We are still in the desert," Mr. Molasky says. "There isn't enough wealth [in Las Vegas] for these prices. To pay $1 million for a place in New York is not a big deal. Here it is a big deal."

The broader Las Vegas housing market remains strong, however. The area is growing rapidly, as more than 5,000 to 6,000 people per month relocate to the city in search of jobs in the region's booming economy. But many new residents are buying modest single-family homes and condos, many of which have been converted from apartments -- at median sales prices of about $175,000, according to Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, a real-estate research firm in Costa Mesa, Calif.

Yet prices for luxury condos could drop in the Las Vegas market by as much as 15% in the next 12 to 18 months, predicts Hessam Nadji, a managing director at Marcus & Millichap, a real-estate research firm based in Encino, Calif. "You are going to see a short-term correction and some softening," Mr. Nadji says. "I don't think the wheels are going to come off and there's going to be a crash."

Real-estate developers blame increased construction and labor costs and a more difficult lending environment for sinking their luxury condo projects. Condo developers say construction costs are higher in Las Vegas than in other U.S. cities because they are competing with casino developers with lots of cash who are willing to pay higher prices to get their developments done quickly.

There are more than 17 condo projects under construction and about 76 on the drawing board in Las Vegas, according to Applied Analysis. If all were completed, they would add 51,000 luxury condo units to this city of about 780,400 households. Developers and researchers say many units that haven't been started will never actually be built. A portion of those proposed units are condo-hotels, which are rented out as hotel rooms but owned by individuals.

Icon Las Vegas ran into problems when the builder of a neighboring condo project filed a lawsuit last year, complaining about Icon's height and location. Construction was delayed by six months. A judge dismissed the suit, but during that time, building prices went up so much that cash from presales wouldn't cover the cost to erect the first tower.

Related Las Vegas, Icon's developer, will return the 10% deposits to about 350 buyers. The first tower was mostly sold and the second one had contracts for about half of the units, according to a person familiar with the project. Mr. Jackson couldn't be reached to comment. Related Las Vegas is a joint venture of Related Cos., New York, owned by Mr. Ross, and Related Group of Florida, Miami, owned by Mr. Perez. The two companies are separately owned and operated, but maintain minority interests in each other. Both have decades of experience in high-rise developments but are new to Las Vegas.

The slacking demand for luxury condos is affecting Related's other major Vegas project, Las Ramblas, which boasts Mr. Clooney as a co- developer. The project was conceived as 11 skyscrapers filled mostly with condos and a small amount of hotel and casino space. Martin S. Burger, president of Related Las Vegas, says Related hopes to announce a deal with a hotel operator that would expand the hotel and casino and trim the number of condos. Mr. Clooney said through a spokesman that he remains "100% behind the project."

The problems in the luxury condo market, priced at $500,000 and up, may also reflect the whipsaw affect of speculators who put down payments for condos before they're built and hope to flip them at a profit later. These speculators artificially inflated demand and now are fleeing. Researchers at Marcus & Millichap estimate that as many as 70% of the buyers of condos in Las Vegas have been speculators or people seeking second homes.

Developers of high-end condos often sell units before construction begins, in part because banks won't provide financing until a large percentage of the units are reserved. In many cases, buyers can obtain a nonbinding purchase contract by putting down just 10% of the sale price. But as home-price appreciation has started to slow, some speculators are canceling their purchases, upending the market.

Last year, about 4,500 condos and townhouses, priced at $500,000 and above, were sold in the preconstruction and construction markets -- a fourfold increase over 2004, according to Hanley Wood. It's unclear how many will make it to final sales. "It's tough to gauge demand for the condo product when you have people committing in a nonbinding way to multiple projects," says Brian Gordon, a principal of Applied Analysis.

Luxury condo builders who broke ground early enough have been lucky. Bruce Weiner, president of Florida-based Turnberry Associates, built one of the developments where sales have actually closed. In 2005, the company sold 85 units in Turnberry Place for an average price of $1.6 million, according to Applied Analysis. In 2004, 218 units were sold for an average price of $928,581. In all, Turnberry has sold about 546 of the 777 units.

"I think the luxury market is there. I just don't think there is enough there to do it all in a year or two. There is enough demand for 2,500 units every year," Mr. Weiner says.

Luxury condos also face competition from condo-hotels. John Restrepo of Las Vegas-based Restrepo Consulting Group LLC, says there are 25 planned condo-hotel projects, which include 19,000 units. Of those, three projects are under construction, with 1,400 units. Researchers say the condo-hotels have the advantage of being developed and operated by major, brand-name companies.

Some developers tried to use celebrities to give their condos an edge. That strategy has had mixed results. Ivana Las Vegas -- a proposed condo tower named after Ms. Trump, an ex-wife of real-estate mogul Donald Trump -- is up for sale. The developer, Victor Altomare, says he could possibly make more money selling the project than by building the condos himself. Mr. Altomare says regardless of the new owner, the project will continue in its current design and that Ms. Trump still will get a condo of her own, with a view. Ms. Trump couldn't be reached to comment.

The market was rattled last spring when a Florida developer, Del American, went back to people who had reserved condos in its high-rise development and told them it was raising the price of the units to pay for increased construction costs. One buyer reserved a condo for $585,000 -- and the developer raised the price to about $1 million but offered the buyer a discount, according to the lawyer for some of the buyers, Richard Donahoo. Some of the buyers are suing the developer. Del American says prices increased on average by 35%. Mr. Donahoo says the price increases were higher.

Del American Chairman and CEO, Christopher DelGuidice, says his agreements with buyers were nonbinding and he had the right to cancel at any point. He says the company is offering to return the deposits to buyers, with interest, or a discount on the newly priced units.

Mr. DelGuidice says his construction costs nearly doubled from the time he marketed the units in the fall of 2003 to when he got the final construction bid last spring. Still, that project is under way and he plans a second project in the city, called Vegas 888, with perks like a members-only nightclub. Prices range from $750,000 to $10 million.

"As the dust settles over the next six months, we feel the projects left standing will be very successful," he says. "Based on marketing and the location we have, we will be one of the ones standing."

---

[antinimby]

Miss America Eyes Hip, Wholesome Comeback

Friday January 13 6:50 PM ET
By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY

LAS VEGAS (AP) - They'll tap dance, sing and glide around the stage. They'll don glitzy costumes, bathing suits and bright smiles in a quest for big money and a chance to see their names in lights. Just don't call them showgirls.

On Saturday, 52 driven, young beauties will arrive in Las Vegas to begin the weeklong whirlwind Miss America pageant. The televised finale airs Jan. 21, 8 p.m. EST. It will be the first time in the annual pageant's 85-year history that the winner will be crowned outside Atlantic City, N.J., a move designed to use Sin City sexiness to stop the show's slipping TV ratings and declining popularity.

It's also the first time the show will air on MTV Network's Country Music Television, a cable channel with red-state roots and a Kenny Chesney-loving following. And, instead of the usual talk-show type host, the pageant this year will be fronted by flat-out TV hunk James Denton of "Desperate Housewives."

The many changes raise one big question, a sad one for longtime viewers to even contemplate: What happens if the pageant's latest incarnation doesn't revive the venerated, but creaky, Mom-and-apple pie institution? Is "Miss America's" survival on the line?

"I don't even want to go there," said Art McMaster, chief executive officer of the Atlantic City-based Miss America Organization, a not-for-profit group that, along with affiliates, makes $45 million in scholarships available to women each year, including $50,000 to the winner.

McMaster notes the organization has entered into a multiyear contract with CMT. He said he hopes the move to a cable network draws new viewers and sets up new, lower expectations for the show's television ratings.

"Will we ever get 20 million viewers again? You know and I know that's never going to happen," he said. "But as long as we get the longtime pageant fans watching, we'll be around another 85 years."

In an attempt to cater to its die-hard followers, producers say they plan to restore the show to its earlier glory by ditching a quiz show and a casual-wear competition, elements recently borrowed from reality television and game shows to try to give the pageant a more updated feel. A record low 9.8 million viewers watched the show on ABC in 2004, a 20 percent drop since 2000 and about half the viewership that watched in 1984.

But McMaster also acknowledges traditional values and scholarship contests don't always make for great television. That's where Las Vegas comes in.

"We've got to show we can put on a very entertaining show," he said. "Quite honestly, no other city has the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas."

The contrast, though, with Miss America's past is eye-opening.

While conceived in 1921 as a way to keep tourists on Atlantic City's boardwalk after Labor Day, the pageant quickly evolved into a symbol of modesty.

"It never has been about glamour or spectacle, all those things that represent Vegas," said Sarah Banet-Weiser, professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and author of "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity." "It's much more about respectability and typicality than it is about showcasing a kind of glamorous model-type woman."

But organizers see Miss America and Las Vegas as a marriage made in media heaven. The move west let the contestants start 11-days of buildup with publicity events in Los Angeles, including "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." The old-fashioned parade in convertibles has been replaced in Las Vegas with a Hollywood-style red carpet ceremony outside the Aladdin hotel-casino, the show's host. Contestants are set to arrive on the Strip in luxury coaches decked out like rock stars' tour buses.

Paul Villadolid, vice president of programming for CMT, says the network picked Las Vegas over Orlando, Fla., and Nashville because the city knows how to put on a show.

"We were interested in doing a big production, we wanted to have access to the top talent. We just knew that was the perfect location," he said.

While Denton will be handling the hosting, producers are keeping mum on a special guest who will, a la longtime host Bert Parks, croon the crowning rendition of "There She Is, Miss America."

Villadolid says that CMT executives are hoping the show lures an audience comparable in size to its 2005 Country Music Awards, which had 9.9 million viewers.

"If it's anywhere close to that it's a success," he said.

Toward that end, CMT has been airing short segments on the contestants to help viewers get to know them better, and the top 10 contestants' profiles will air during the show. Some of the video clips will show Denton interacting backstage with the women so viewers can see them in a less-scripted setting.

Miss Congeniality, a title awarded to a competitor by her peers, will make a comeback after being pulled from the show in 1974. Each segment of the pageant, such as the evening-gown competition, will be introduced by clips of historical highlights. The final selection process goes from 10 to five and then to three finalists to help build suspense.

There are no plans yet about whether the pageant will make Las Vegas its permanent home or move on next year.

That decision likely depends on how its received by Las Vegas and how the Miss America faithful react to the switch. Looking back, Las Vegas and Nevada don't have much of a pageant tradition.

Indeed, only 13 women competed for the title of Miss Nevada last year. The winner, 23-year-old Crystal Wosik of Las Vegas got involved largely to earn money for college. She says she's never even seen a Miss America pageant on TV.

[TimmyG]

[/URL] This was in the online addition of Time.

Vegas Condos Go Cold

Developers are suddenly scaling back their bets on the town's once sizzling luxury real estate market
By [URL="javascript:void(0)"]SONJA STEPTOE/LOS ANGELES (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/)
http://img.timeinc.net/time/home/images/c_arrows.gifSUBSCRIBE TO TIME (https://subs.timeinc.net/CampaignHandler/tdsplit?source_id=15)http://img.timeinc.net/time/home/images/c_print2.gifPRINT (http://www.time.com/time/business/printout/0,8816,1152983,00.html)http://img.timeinc.net/time/home/images/c_email.gifE-MAIL (http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1152983,00.html#)http://img.timeinc.net/time/home/images/c_author.gifMORE BY AUTHOR (http://www.time.com/time/searchresults?query=SONJA%20STEPTOE)
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2006
Now that several high rollers in the Las Vegas condo-hotel game, including luxury properties linked to Michael Jordan and Ivana Trump, are either folding or selling their holdings, a growing number of players are losing their taste for big bets on high-rise, residential real estate development.
Over the past two years, as high-rise fever spread across town, prices for the luxury apartments ballooned, fetching as much as $500 - $1,000 a square foot— or up to $1.5 million for a one-bedroom— at the peak. Buyers, mostly interested in flipping them for quick profits, eagerly anted up five-figure down payments, while developers planned more than 70 luxury towers holding a total of about 43,000 units on or near the Strip and downtown. But the intense competition for the city's limited supply of contractors sent construction costs skyrocketing 30% last year, just as lending policies tightened, interest rates climbed and sales started to slow.
Currently, just 18 projects are underway, and nervous developers have called off three high-profile projects over the past seven months. A number of others, including one backed by a group including George Clooney, either are being revised or postponed. Experts now forecast that only a quarter to a half of the seven dozen originally proposed projects will ever be built. Brian Gordon, a principal at Applied Analysis, a real estate research firm, says the developers with experience building luxury high rises, whose properties are located on or near the Strip and which carry a strong and recognizable brand name— such as Donald Trump, Hard Rock and MGM Grand— are the ones playing winning hands in Vegas now.
Back east, the luxury condo markets that have had similarly explosive growth in Miami and New York, where high-end apartments can command from $2,000 to $4,000 a square foot, haven’t slumped yet. Still, experts say the abrupt reversal of fortune in the desert, where the mainstream residential real estate and hotel markets are still quite healthy, shows just how quickly the odds can change in even the most affluent markets if runaway speculation and overzealous development take hold. “It’s another case of irrational exuberance,” says John Restrepo, head of a Las Vegas real estate and economic consulting firm. “There is a market for high-rise condo hotels here; but it’s not as deep as people thought it was. The days of the two guys from the East Coast or Canada coming into town and promoting a condo development with a website and a dream are over.”

[lofter1]

That bubble ^^ burst fast.

[Scruffy88]

honestly who didn't see this coming. i thought that they were trying way too much, way too fast. Dubai should take note. Their bubble isn't far from popping either

[lofter1]

Unveiling: Las Vegas, Nevada

Frank O. Gehry Lou Ruvo Alzheimer's Institute

arcspace.com
Feb. 20, 2006

http://www.arcspace.com/architects/gehry/lrai/lrai.html

An uneven stack of blocks anchoring waves of steel and glass...

http://www.arcspace.com/architects/gehry/lrai/1Ruvo.jpg
Photo courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP

Frank Gehry recently unveiled his design for a new 5-story building in downtown Las Vegas.
The building will house the Lou Ruvo Alzheimer's Institute, a proposed center for the research and treatment of neurological disorders,
funded by Las Vegas liquor distributor Larry Ruvo.

The block units in front will be for researchers and patients.
A soaring atrium, separated from the medical building by an open-air courtyard,
will be a venue for events and fundraising.

The 9,000 square foot atrium is covered by waves of glass and steel.

http://www.arcspace.com/architects/gehry/lrai/2ruvo.jpg
Photo courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP

http://www.arcspace.com/architects/gehry/lrai/3ruvo.jpg
Photo courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP

The Institute will also serve as the headquarters of the Keep Memory Alive foundation,
the Las Vegas Alzheimer’s Association and the Las Vegas Parkinson’s Disease Association.

Total project area: 55,000-square feet
Site area: 61 acres

Architects: Gehry Partners, LLP
Partner in charge: Frank O.Gehry
Estimated construction start: 2007
Estimated completion: 2009

Gehry Partners, LLP (http://www.arcspace.com/architects/gehry/features.htm) arcspace features

[Alonzo-ny]

never seen a gehry design like that before

[TLOZ Link5]

Vegas seems to sum up this [paraphrased] quote by Oscar Wilde:

"I like America. Where else in the world could a nation make the transition from barbarity to decadence without bothering to create civilization first?"

[lofter1]

Viva Las Vegas ...
US to test 700-tonne explosive

breitbart.com
AFP
Mar 30, 2006

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/03/30/060330162648.wxde5ocl.html

The US military plans to detonate a 700 tonne explosive charge in a test called "Divine Strake" ( INFO (http://www.saviac.org/76th_Symposium/Abstracts/L-35.htm) ) that will send a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas, a senior defense official said.

"I don't want to sound glib here but it is the first time in Nevada that you'll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons," said James Tegnelia, head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency ( http://www.dtra.mil/ ).

Tegnelia said the test was part of a US effort to develop weapons capable of destroying deeply buried bunkers housing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

"We have several very large penetrators we're developing," he told defense reporters.

"We also have -- are you ready for this - a 700-tonne explosively formed charge that we're going to be putting in a tunnel in Nevada," he said.

"And that represents to us the largest single explosive that we could imagine doing conventionally to solve that problem," he said.

The aim is to measure the effect of the blast on hard granite structures, he said.

"If you want to model these weapons, you want to know from a modeling point of view what is the ideal best condition you could ever set up in a conventional weapon -- what's the best you can do.

"And this gets at the best point you could get on a curve. So it allows us to predict how effective these kinds of weapons ... would be," he said.

He said the Russians have been notified of the test, which is scheduled for the first week of June at the Nevada test range.

"We're also making sure that Las Vegas understands ( NNSA_Draft_Report_11/05 [pdf] (http://budget.state.nv.us/clearinghouse/Notice/2006/E2006-222.pdf) ) ," Tegnelia said.

Copyright AFP 2005

[lofter1]

An interesting side-track to get you away from the tables while in Vegas:

Atomic_Testing_Museum (http://www.atomictestingmuseum.org/)

The building ...

http://www.ntshf.org/images/bldg6-16.jpg

The interior ...

http://www.americanheritage.com/assets/images/articles/web/20051230-atomic-museum.jpg
(Atomic Testing Museum)
The entrance to the museum’s
Underground Testing Gallery.

Albert Einstein Action Figure ...

https://express19.site-secure.net/ntshf/storeimages/P0000432sm.jpg

[antinimby]

No More Cheap Shrimp Cocktail

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/05/05/business/06vegas600.jpg


By MATT RICHTEL
Published: May 6, 2006

LAS VEGAS — They are coming to blow up a lonely outpost of low-cost Las Vegas.

Before daybreak on May 9, an explosives team plans to demolish the Boardwalk Hotel and Casino, a recently closed budget oasis on the Strip with a giant clown face on its facade and signs advertising $1.99 shrimp cocktails. It is giving way to this city's latest incarnation: luxury.

The Strip has become a considerably more expensive place to spend the night — roughly $125 on average last year, a 23 percent increase in just two years — and it is expected to get more so. At least four new luxury hotel projects are under way that will replace old standbys, like the Boardwalk, and add more than 10,000 rooms.

The hotels are catering to an influx of convention-going business travelers and deeper-pocketed visitors patronizing high-end restaurants, shops and shows. The hotels here are heralding flat-panel televisions and fancy shower soaps as they once did a cheap place to sleep off a night in the casino — whose tables and slots subsidized the rooms.

Loud imposing smoke-filled casinos still anchor this town, and $50 rates are still typical at hotels downtown, away from the action. But the Strip, the boulevard of Las Vegas dreams, is no longer home to the low-cost weekend getaway.

Las Vegas "was known as the capital of cheap rooms and cheap food," said Alan Feldman, a spokesman for MGM Mirage, the giant hotel and casino company developing the Boardwalk site. "It was known as the capital of the cheap vacation — and you got what you paid for. We used to give coupon books for free drinks and two-for-one buffet. Now we have 300-thread-count sheets and turn-down service."


Graphic: What's Coming and Going on the Strip (http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/05/06/business/20060506_VEGAS_GRAPHIC.0.html)


The trends conform to Las Vegas's effort to redefine itself as a more diversified destination, offering superb but costly restaurants ($88 for the 12-ounce grilled Kobe rib-eye steak at Tao at the Venetian) and shows like Cirque du Soleil's "O" ($93.50 to $150 a seat). The new features have helped keep Las Vegas growing even as many new casinos — from small card houses to Indian casinos — are springing up around the country and providing local outlets for gamblers.

Not everyone is happy about the face-lift.

"It'll probably price us out of the market," said Dr. Bill Waugh, 61, an eye surgeon from Olympia, Wash., visiting Las Vegas with his wife, Patti. They were staying at the Flamingo, an older hotel on the Strip, for $91, the lowest nightly rate he could find. Two years ago, he said, he found a room at the Stardust for $35.

"When the cheapest room is $250," he said, "it's time to do something else."

Mr. Feldman and others said budget travelers were still coming to Las Vegas, but they might be coming less frequently and represented a smaller share of a steadily growing tourist base. In 2005, 38.6 million people visited, up from 37.4 million the year before and 29 million in 1995, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

Many of the new visitors were business travelers, who drive up hotel prices by attending weekday conventions and who can put their room charges on their expense account. In 2005, 6.2 million visitors identified themselves as convention delegates, up from 5.7 million in 2004, the visitors authority said.

Here, they give credit for the change to the opening in 1990 of the Sands Expo and Convention Center, which drew business travelers, and to the 1989 opening of the Mirage, the first modern luxury hotel here and the brainchild of the developer Stephen A. Wynn.

On April 28, Mr. Wynn and his wife, Elaine, broke ground on their latest project, the Wynn Encore, a 2,000-room hotel that will have, among other amenities, a retractable glass roof on the pool. It is meant as the sister to the Wynn Las Vegas, where room rates are typically $300 or more.


Graphic: Widening Room-Rate Gap (http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/05/06/business/20060506_VEGAS_CHART.html)


Ms. Wynn says she is sympathetic to the tourist with a limited budget.

"Nobody is intending for this to be exclusive," she said of the Wynn Encore.

People "are free to come in and enjoy the environment" at the Encore, she said. "They can visit the gardens, and shop. They can buy a T-shirt for $28 that is a wonderful souvenir."

But actually staying the night, well, that may be another matter. "The budget customer is eventually going to get squeezed out" of the Strip, said Jane Pedreira, a casino industry analyst with Lehman Brothers. The rooms have to keep up with demand from wealthier visitors, international guests and business travelers, she said.


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/05/06/business/06vegas650.3.jpg
Prima suites at the Venetian offer bathrooms that reflect the push for more luxurious accommodations along the Strip.


Everywhere, there are signs of the transition and of a collision between upscale and underbelly, between luxury and the lewd. Airport visitors are greeted upon arrival with neon billboards boasting of Wolfgang Puck and the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art while others depict half-naked male exotic dancers from Chippendales and Thunder From Down Under.

Developments include Project CityCenter, a $7 billion hotel, casino and condo complex that is to replace the Boardwalk; Echelon Place, a $4 billion hotel, casino and convention center on the land now occupied by the Stardust; and the Palazzo, an upscale hotel and retail center (including a Barneys New York) under construction where the Tam O'Shanter, a budget motel, once sat.

The cost of staying on the Strip is still less than a night's lodging in some big cities, and considerably cheaper rooms are available for tourists willing to travel 10 minutes to the less dazzling downtown. But the Strip is a different matter.

In 2005, the average cost of a night's stay at one of the Strip's hotel-casinos was $125.38, up from $113.02 in 2004 and $96.92 in 2000, according to the state of Nevada.

The prices are rising throughout the area, too, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. In 2005, the average nightly rate was $103 for 294 hotels and motels throughout Las Vegas, up from $90 in 2004.

"We're not losing track of the middle market," said Rob Stillwell, spokesman for Boyd Gaming, a conglomerate that owns the Stardust. But budget travelers "may not stay on the Strip," he said. "They may have to stay a little bit north, or a little bit south."

The Stardust is scheduled to close at year's end and be razed in the spring of 2007. In its place will be Echelon Place, including a 3,300-room hotel, and three boutique hotels: the 400-room Shangri-La, the 600-room Delano and the 1,000-room Mondrian — meaningful names to seekers of four-star accommodations. There will also be a million square feet of meeting and exhibition space, 350,000 square feet of shopping, and, yes, a casino.

The Stardust was built in 1958, but its west tower, with 1,360 rooms, was built in 1991 and its accommodations seem clean, if nondescript. But renovation would not be enough, Mr. Stillwell said, noting that the infrastructure must be rebuilt to meet a new definition of luxury that includes a short distance from the valet to check-in, and from elevator to rooms. In luxury Las Vegas, excessive walking is old school and low class.

"I don't understand why they can't make the Stardust go," said Chris Lorbiecki, 53, a Milwaukee resident who says she remains a regular visitor to Las Vegas, despite prices for food and lodging she finds increasingly prohibitive. She was eating a soft-serve ice cream cone and lamenting the upscale changes in the city, while standing outside the Stardust as her husband gambled inside.


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/05/06/business/06vegas650.2.jpg
The Stardust Hotel was renovated in the 1990's, but is still considered outmoded. The hotel will be demolished next year.


The new places they're building "are for high rollers," she said. "They're not for people like us. You can get deals if you stay off the Strip, but we want to stay on the Strip."

But the hotel developers here are high rollers, too, and betting big on a luxury future. Land on the Strip has been going for $20 million to $24 million an acre, said Mr. Feldman of MGM Mirage, prices not supported by budget hotels.

Some visitors like the idea of more amenities. "I like swankier, smaller and more intimate hotels," said Lisa I. Roberts, who owns a hair salon in Bellevue, Wash., and was visiting Las Vegas on business. She stayed at the MGM Grand, paying $180 a night during the week, and though it is the current version of luxury, she found the environment too big and corporate.

Dan and Jacqueline Aynseworth, both 64, and retirees from Torrance, Calif., said they too liked and could afford the nicer hotels, with their big bathrooms and relative comfort. But they are not sure how less fortunate people can continue to afford to stay here.

"They're pushing out the more moderate-income person," Ms. Aynseworth said. "Aren't they the people who helped build Las Vegas?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/06/business/06vegas.html

[TeddyBear]

so what about New York?

[staraman]

There is something you have completely overlooked. I read an article that the large casinos were already looking at the viability of building a pipeline to carry water from the north of Nevada and divert it from it's current use of farming.

Though the cost is in the billions to build such a pipeline, I am pretty sure it will be built.... especially when future earnings in the billions -depends on it.

S. Taraman

The mayor of LV continues to claim that the water will never be a problem. (?!?!)

Colorado River levels are at their lowest point in years (so low that areas covered over by water when the Glen Canyon Dam was built in the 60's are now exposed for the first time in 40 years). Arizona, California & Nevada are re-negotating over who gets how much water from the Colorado, as the original formulas were based upon numbers from a period that turns out to have had the largest rainfall in 500 years (rendering pointless the previous models that were used to determine the water available for the southwest).

[ZippyTheChimp]

Though the cost is in the billions to build such a pipeline, I am pretty sure it will be built.... especially when future earnings in the billions -depends on it.

S. TaramanI don't think the problem is the availability of money.

[lofter1]

Stardust Hotel-Casino Is Demolished

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/13/us/13casino.337.3.jpg
David Allio/Reuters

NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/us/13cnd-casino.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin)
By STEVE FRIESS
March 13, 2007

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/multimedia/icons/video_icon.gif Video (http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=874503acf8ec9829070b6a12621177695139c105 )

LAS VEGAS, March 13 — With a deafening rumble and a cloud of debris that has become all but customary in this city of short-lived icons, the venerable Stardust Hotel-Casino was demolished early this morning.

The spectacular demolition ended a yearlong farewell to a classic 48-year-old resort that was, in its heyday, considered the ultimate in luxury and style.

It was a frequent haunt of Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack, the original Las Vegas Strip home of the illusionist duo Siegfried and Roy, and the scene of reputed organized crime activity that inspired the book and film “Casino.”

In Las Vegas, where old structures are dismissed as soon as they outlive their usefulness, the Stardust was cleared to make way for a new $4 billion, 5,300-room mixed-used complex called Echelon due to be built by 2010 by Boyd Gaming Inc.

Hundreds of invited guests and corporate officials watched the demolition from across a parking lot on the Las Vegas Strip, the street of major hotels and casinos that runs through the heart of the city. The building came down at 2:30 a.m. local time.

“It’s always a little sad to see these places go, but that place was so old and gross — and old and gross don’t belong in Vegas,” said Jeff Remini, 49, of Los Angeles. Mr. Remini added two days to his vacation here after hearing that the demolition was planned for this morning.

Four grandsons of Boyd’s chief executive, William Boyd, pushed a wooden lever that signaled to the demolition crew to begin the series of dynamite explosions that caused the collapse of a 32-story tower built in 1989 and a nine-story low-rise structure that was an original part of the resort, built in 1958.

Fireworks marked the 10-second countdown in front of the buildings before the explosives were touched off. A planned laser light show was canceled when unexpectedly strong winds blew a cloud of dust toward the audience.
Las Vegas has become known in recent decades for tearing down the notable resorts that first put the Strip on the map.

Famous places like the Dunes, the Hacienda and the Sands have been replaced by the Bellagio, the Mandalay Bay and the Venetian.

“The Stardust was the Bellagio of its day, the most dazzling casino out there,” said Nicholas Pileggi, who spent four years researching the exploits of Frank Rosenthal, the mobster who ran the Stardust, for his bestselling nonfiction book “Casino” and the fictionalized screenplay for the Robert DeNiro film of the same name. “But time moves on,” Mr. Pileggi said.

The oldest casino structure on the Strip now is a part of a coffee shop at the Sahara that dates back just 55 years.

“Unlike most other cities, we in Las Vegas reinvent ourselves all the time,” said Mr. Boyd. “In order to keep up with the competition, you have to keep improving your product. That’s what we’re going to do here at the Stardust. But we still have great memories.”

Some are not so accepting of the changes. Joel Rosales, 23, owns the Web site LeavingLV.net (http://leavinglv.net/), which pays tribute to each property that is razed.

The loss of the Stardust, he said, is particularly disappointing. “Having been born and raised here in Vegas, it’s always been a rock,” he said of the resort. “In this ever-changing city, the Stardust was always there. I wouldn’t say I’m as upset as I am disappointed, that we as a city have no sense of preserving our past and heritage, no matter how tacky or out-of-date it may be.”

Mark Loizeaux, whose company, Controlled Demolition Inc., has overseen the demolition, or “implosion,” of every major Strip structure since the Dunes was taken down in 1993, understands such sentiments.

“With the demolition of these structures, there’s a lot of change,” Mr. Loizeaux said. “We try to honor structures by making a show that lets it have one last day on the front pages of the paper.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

***

From http://www.leavinglv.net/stardust.html (http://www.leavinglv.net/stardust.html) ...

http://www.leavinglv.net/star1a.jpg

The Stardust circa 1961 ...

http://www.leavinglv.net/star2.jpg

[lofter1]

... the Stardust was cleared to make way for a new $4 billion, 5,300-room mixed-used complex called Echelon due to be built by 2010 by Boyd Gaming Inc. ...

http://www.finehomeslv.com/echelon-place/echelon-las-vegas.gif

http://www.echelonresort.com/main.html (http://www.echelonresort.com/main.html)

Echelon Place (via skyscraperpage.com (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?threadid=50286) )

http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/2319/ghj8or.jpg

http://www.newscom.com/db/PRN/prnphotos/docs/039/492.thm

http://www.boydgaming.com/ (http://www.boydgaming.com/)

The Echelon Resort hotel partners here will include Morgans Hotel Group and the Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts.

Echelon: 3,300 rooms: 2,600 room Resort Tower; 700 room Suite Tower.

Shangri-La: 400 Rooms & Suites

Delano Hotel: 600 Rooms

Mondrian Hotel: 1,000 Rooms

140,000 sf Casino

25 Restaurants & Bars

2 Theaters: 4,000 seats & 1,500 seats

Retail: 350,000 sf

Covered Parking: 8,000 cars

Construction overseen by Tishman.

[Bob]

The Stardust lost its appeal for me when it decided, about 10 years ago, to "modernize" its world-famous Jetsons-era sign by replacing the zig zag lettering with -- get this -- Helvetica!!

It should have stuck with the space-age, zoom zoom stuff and really packed on the Viva Las Vegas, albeit on steroids. Instead, we're going to get the "Echelon," whatever the heck that is supposed to represent. ZZZZZZZ

[homeandaway]

Las Vegas totally rocks!.
~Alex~

[homeandaway]

I wouldnt mind visiting this cool city!.
~Alex~

[antinimby]

In Las Vegas, Too Many Hotels Are Never Enough


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/23/business/vegas600.jpg
A model of a new tower in the CityCenter development in Las Vegas. MGM, which is building it, calls it the
most expensive privately funded project in American history.


By GARY RIVLIN
Published: April 24, 2007 (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/business/24vegas.html)

LAS VEGAS — Stephen A. Wynn, the hotel and gambling impresario, still remembers the first time he was asked if he and other developers had lost their minds building so many casino hotels here. It was the mid-1970s, when Las Vegas had about 35,000 rooms.

He was asked that same question in the 1980s, while building the 3,000-room Mirage, and again in the early 1990s. By that time Las Vegas was home to more hotel rooms — 106,000 — than any other city in the country.

And so now, with Las Vegas in the midst of another big building boom, Mr. Wynn only shrugs when people suggest that the nation’s premier gambling center, with 151,000 rooms and counting, simply cannot absorb any more new hotels.

Ever since the mobster Bugsy Siegel opened the first modern hotel casino here in 1946, the surest means for gaining attention has been to one-up the competition by building an even more monstrously immense pleasure palace.

But even Las Vegas has never witnessed anything quite like what is going on today.

“This is the most outrageous, over-the-top expansion” ever, Mr. Wynn said.

Americans — and an increasing number of foreigners — can’t seem to get enough of Las Vegas. The current construction craze is driven by a 95 percent weekend occupancy rate — and rates that approach 100 percent at the city’s newer properties. Last year, even the weekday rate fell just shy of 90 percent, partly because of the city’s success in positioning itself as an attractive convention destination.

Fueling the current boom as well are the enticing riches to be made catering to a new kind of guest: aging boomers entering the empty- nest phase of their free-spending lives.

And contrary to some predictions, the opening of American Indian casinos and other gambling outposts in more than 30 states has not hurt Las Vegas.

Far from it. The smaller, more prosaic gambling halls stretched across the country have actually helped the boom, casino executives say, serving as a kind of a feeder system for Las Vegas as people gain a taste for gambling and then aspire to a touch of the big time. The soaring popularity of poker has also helped drive growth as the game has drawn a younger crowd to the city.

“I suppose one day Las Vegas will reach its limit,” said Anthony Curtis, president of LasVegasAdvisor.com, a local travel site. “But that day is nowhere in sight.”

Consider the Venetian, which already ranks as the sixth-biggest hotel in the world and the fourth largest in Las Vegas, home to 15 of the 20 largest on the planet. This colossus will assume the top spot once it opens a 3,200-suite tower, now under construction, that will bring its room count to more than 7,000.

Another development, Echelon Place, will have more than 5,000 rooms when it is built on the site of the old Stardust, which its owners demolished last month. The MGM currently ranks as the largest hotel in Las Vegas — and the world — with 5,000 rooms.

At $4.4 billion, Echelon Place would rank as the most expensive development in Las Vegas history — if not for the $7 billion the MGM Mirage is spending on CityCenter. That price tag is far more than the previous record, set when Mr. Wynn and his financial backers spent $2.7 billion building the 2,700-room Wynn, which opened in 2005.


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/23/business/650vegas2.jpg
CityCenter, a mini-city bordering the Las Vegas strip, will feature six towering buildings that reach as high as
61 stories, including a 4,000-room hotel, over 67 acres.


Even competitors marvel over the scope of the CityCenter project, which MGM calls the most expensive privately funded project in American history. This minicity bordering the Las Vegas strip will feature six towering buildings that reach as high as 61 stories. Covering 67 acres, it will include a 4,000-room hotel, a sprawling convention center, a half million square feet of retail space and 2,700 high-end condominium units.

The changing demographics have led the designers of the new Vegas to push a sleek and modern aesthetic, along with amenities like ever more luxurious spas, in place of the gilt and gaudy-themed properties that reigned in the 1980s and 1990s. But their owners’ ambitions are greater than ever.

“The building we’re seeing right now,” said Gary Loveman, chief executive of Harrah’s, which operates half a dozen casinos on the Las Vegas strip, “is by leaps and bounds bigger than anything we’ve ever seen.”

For a long time, Harrah’s had only one major casino in Las Vegas. “One of my predecessors was convinced in the late 1980s, early 1990s, that Las Vegas was overbuilt,” Mr. Loveman said. “That turned out to be a wrong call.
Spectacularly wrong.”

Even more than hotel construction, a boom in condominium development has increased the number of construction cranes crowding the skies.


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/23/business/20070424_VEGAS2_GRAPHIC.gif


Developers, including the real estate mogul Donald J. Trump and Florida-based Turnberry Associates, are collectively spending billions of dollars building condo towers on or near the Strip, adding thousands of units even as the local real estate market, like much of the country, has been mired in a downturn.

But MGM and other developers see themselves as competing for buyers far beyond the Las Vegas market. “We see these as third homes,” said Alan M. Feldman, a spokesman for MGM.

Data provided by the National Association of Realtors indicated that the median price of a condo in the Las Vegas metropolitan area fell by 3 percent in the second half of 2006.

In a perverse way, though, the city’s current boom helped developers here avoid the kind of frantic overbuilding that plagues condominium developers and condo owners in cities like Miami and Washington. John Restrepo of the Restrepo Consulting Group, a real estate firm based here, said a “gold rush fever” swept through the Las Vegas condo market, with more than 100 luxury condo projects, totaling 72,000 units, announced since 2005.

But escalating land prices and a steep rise in construction costs, Mr. Restrepo said, “caused most of these guys, who were never much more than a Web site and a dream, to fade away.” Today, there are just 22 luxury condo projects, representing 10,000 units, under construction, he said, “and a large portion of those units have been sold.”

The MGM Mirage is not the only casino company venturing into the condominium business. So, too, is the Venetian, which will add a 270-unit condominium tower to its property along the strip.

“Las Vegas has morphed from a place that is simply a casino box with rooms to rent for 23 bucks a night,” said William P. Weidner, the president of Las Vegas Sands, the parent company of the Venetian. “It is now a place with mixed-used developments which take advantage of the new Las Vegas, a multiday-stay destination and a place where increasingly people want to live.”

The scale of Las Vegas’ hotel industry and the size of its properties puts other cities to shame. Even the massive 2,000-room casino resort Mr. Wynn is building next to Wynn — it would rank as New York’s largest hotel — will not crack Las Vegas’s top 15.

Not to be outdone, Fontainebleau Resorts recently announced plans for a $2.8 billion, 3,900-room resort on the northern end of the Las Vegas strip. And developer Ian Bruce Eichner has raised $3 billion to build a 3,000-unit condo-hotel, the Cosmopolitan Resort and Casino, on the strip.

[And there is the likelihood of more large-scale projects on the horizon. On Monday, Goldman Sachs paid $1.3 billion for the four Nevada casinos owned by Carl C. Icahn’s American Real Estate Partners, including the Stratosphere Las Vegas Hotel and Casino, but also a precious 17 acres of undeveloped land on the strip.]

Even without the new hotel properties, the 151,000 guest rooms in the extended Las Vegas area, according to Smith Travel Research, a lodging industry data broker, are nearly twice the 80,000 rooms in New York City. Orlando ranks second to Las Vegas with 111,000 rooms.

And yet Las Vegas has more new hotel rooms under construction (11,000) than any other city in the country, as well as more rooms on the drawing boards (35,000).

Tourists spent a combined $15 billion last year at the strip’s various casino resorts. Sixty percent of those revenues — $9 billion — were from noncasino sources ranging from hotel rooms to restaurants, some as pricey as New York’s best, to high-end retailers that pay dearly for a spot inside the sprawling malls that are a staple of today’s Las Vegas casino.

These revenue sources are proving enticing even to an old-line player like Boyd Gaming, a middle-market casino company that had ceded the high-end market to the likes of MGM and the Venetian. But with the announcement of its plans for the $4.4 billion Echelon Place, Boyd made clear it was going upscale, too.

“We considered a variety of options,” said Robert L. Boughner, a longtime Boyd executive who is overseeing the Echelon project. “But ultimately we concluded that there were very compelling reasons to enter the premium tier.”

Concerns over future limits on water supplies might ultimately slow development here. Eventually, tourists might tire of fighting the daily traffic jams that snarl the strip and nearby freeways, or grow frustrated negotiating McCarran International Airport, which seems in a perpetual state of crisis.

But those problems have not hampered Las Vegas’s success so far. The city had just under 39 million visitors in 2006, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority — an 86 percent increase over the 21 million visiting the city in 1990.

And in anticipation of handling even larger hordes of tourists, McCarran is in the first year of a five-year, $4 billion makeover. Meanwhile, officials are looking into adding a second airport at Ivanpah Valley, 30 miles from Las Vegas.

“People have been predicting dating back to 1955 that Las Vegas will reach a saturation point,” said David G. Schwartz, author of “Roll the Bones,” a history of gambling, and director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “But me, I wouldn’t bet against casino growth.”


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/04/23/business/070424_VEGAS1_GRAPHC.gif

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[BigMac]

Yahoo! News
November 13, 2007

Casino in Las Vegas to be demolished

By RYAN NAKASHIMA

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20071112/capt.95947362616447edbd85edfc3e73492d.final_fronti er_ny117.jpg
This artist's rendering made available Monday, Nov. 12, 2007 by Preferred Public Relations & Marketing shows a $5 billion megaresort planned for the former site of the New Frontier hotel in Las Vegas.

The New Frontier, which earned historical notations by becoming the Strip's first theme casino and hosting Elvis Presley's debut in the city, is set to become history itself early Tuesday when it is imploded to make way for a $5 billion megaresort.

The low-key gambling hall, which opened as the Last Frontier in 1942 with a cowboy village theme and later embraced the space age before returning to its Wild West roots, had become known for bikini bull riding, cheap hotel rooms and $5 craps before it closed its doors for good in July.

It will make way for a resort planned by IDB Group and Elad Group, the owner of The Plaza hotel in New York. The developers have said they want to create a luxury hotel with about 3,500 rooms, private residences, retail space and a casino bearing The Plaza brand, all to reach for the highest end of the market.

The Stardust hotel-casino was imploded in March to make way for Boyd Gaming Corp.'s $4.4 billion casino complex, Echelon, scheduled to open in 2010. The destruction of the New Frontier is the latest step in a dramatic, and expensive, facelift for the northern Strip.

"It's another budget option on the Strip that's gone," said David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "The future is really high-end."

Billionaire Steve Wynn said recently that he had noticed fewer 25-cent slot players wandering into his lavish Wynn Las Vegas resort.

"That's because the Frontier and the Stardust are closed," he said.

The first of Donald Trump's gold-glass, billion-dollar-plus condominium towers is set to open behind the New Frontier site early next year. Wynn plans to open the $2.2 billion Encore in early 2009, and the $2.8 billion Fontainebleau is scheduled to open farther north later that year.

MGM Mirage Inc. is planning its own multibillion-dollar goliath with Kerzner International and Dubai World at the north end of the Strip for 2012.

The transformation has made land prices soar and elevated the northern Strip's importance.

"It just became an epicenter of Vegas," said Phil Ruffin, who sold the 34.5-acre site to Elad for $1.24 billion in May.

Ruffin bought the Frontier in 1997 for $165 million and quickly settled a nearly 6 1/2-year strike by 550 hotel workers, one of the longest job actions in U.S. history.

Ruffin planned to transform the Frontier until ballooning land values changed his mind.

"It was no genius on my part. It was the property itself that just got better," he said. "Let's say (it was) a hell of a lot of luck."

The New Frontier was the second hotel-casino to open on the Strip, and over its 65 years it played host to such entertainers as Ronald Reagan, Wayne Newton and Siegfried & Roy. Presley performed for the first time in Las Vegas at the resort in 1956. Billionaire Howard Hughes once owned it, and Wynn also owned a part of it.

The new owners aim to break ground in the third quarter of 2008 and open in late 2011.

An artist's rendering shows a series of French Renaissance chateau-style towers, complete with the green copper roofs and gable windows that characterize The Plaza in New York. For the Las Vegas version, the buildings are interspersed with swimming pools and greenery.

Elad, which is owned by Israeli billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva, is completing a $400 million renovation of The Plaza in New York. The company has said it plans to take the brand to other cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, Boston, London, Paris, Rome, Tokyo and Shanghai.

Copyright © 2007 Yahoo

[antinimby]

Up With the New: A Second Center City for Las Vegas


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/04/23/us/vegas02650.jpg
A proposed hotel by the celebrity chef Charlie Palmer, one of five ambitious projects.


By STEVE FRIESS
Published: April 23, 2008 (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/us/23vegas.html)

LAS VEGAS — As other cities look to replace their blighted downtowns with new development, Las Vegas, known for its extravagant facsimiles of European and American landmarks, has come up with an unusual approach: Build another downtown, right next to the decaying one.

On Thursday, the city will formally inaugurate a new urban core on a 61-acre, undeveloped parcel of land — a project that some experts say is unprecedented in city planning. Called Union Park, its supporters hope it will revive the historic downtown just to the east, where the region’s courthouses, government offices and oldest casinos are clustered.

More than $6 billion in mostly private money has been announced for five ambitious projects: an Alzheimer’s research center, designed by Frank Gehry; a 60-story international center for jewelry trading; a hotel by the celebrity chef Charlie Palmer; a casino-resort; thousands of residential units and square feet of office space, and, as its centerpiece, a $360 million performing arts center.

Construction on the rippled Gehry building and utility lines is under way on this former brownfield, once a chemical dumping ground for the Union Pacific Railroad.


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/04/23/us/vegas01650.jpg
A rendering of the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute, designed by Frank Gehry, covers the fence surrounding the building’s
construction site at Union Park in Las Vegas.


“It’s quite unusual that there’s a big swath of downtown ground just sitting there without having to go through a whole rigmarole to acquire,” said Bill Hudnut, a senior fellow at the Urban Land Institute in Washington. Mr. Hudnut, the former mayor of Indianapolis, recalled that acquiring just three blocks of that city “involved some legal fights and eminent domain, the demolition of buildings, numerous deals with numerous owners.” In Las Vegas, he added, “they’re just building new stuff.”

It is an approach recommended to the mayor of Las Vegas, Oscar Goodman, a criminal defense lawyer famed for defending mafia figures, by major developers brought in to tutor him in redevelopment after his election in 1999. The mayor, who admits he ran “almost as a game” to win, said he quickly realized that reversing the downtown area’s decline could become his most important legacy. (Downtown Las Vegas is immediately north of the Strip.)

“They all told me I couldn’t do anything because I didn’t have what I needed,” which was land, recalled Mr. Goodman, now in his third and final term. “I despaired. Then I looked out my window and saw this fallow 61 acres of brownfield.”


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/04/23/us/vegas04190.jpg
Mayor Oscar Goodman said:
“I despaired. Then I looked out
my window and saw this fallow
61 acres of brownfield.”


The city acquired it by swapping other land with the holding company that owned the parcel. But it would take five years and several failed deals with developers before the city signed with Newland Communities to manage and design the site.

In the meantime, the city’s acquisition spurred other developers to snap up vacant land nearby. Union Park is now surrounded by an outlet mall and 3 of 10 buildings planned for the $3 billion World Market Center, a furniture-industry exposition space. The city’s plans “created the credibility of a Las Vegas that’s open for business outside of the Strip,” said Robert J. Maricich, chief executive and president of World Market Center.

But the national economic downturn may play a role in how soon all of Union Park is realized. Already, the opening date for the $700 million World Jewelry Center has been pushed back one year, and questions abound as to whether the more than 3,000 residential units planned to be built will sell in a state with one of the highest foreclosure rates in the United States.

“There’s no question that the Union Park property is going be developed,” said Matt Ward, editor of the weekly Las Vegas Business Press. “The question is whether some of these projects that were supposed to break ground this year will do so. We’re mainly talking about delays, I think. Are you going to see business leaders in town talking openly about that? Probably not.”

Mr. Goodman has brought his boisterous personality and decades of friendships in the community to bear, persuading the region’s top liquor distributor, Larry Ruvo, to build the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute. The research center, named for Mr. Ruvo’s father, who died of Alzheimer’s disease, is a partnership with the University of Nevada School of Medicine.

The linchpin, though, is the Smith Center for the Performing Arts, Las Vegas’s first stab at a Lincoln Center-style facility that can be home for ballet and philharmonic companies. It will break ground in August.


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/04/23/us/vegas03650.jpg
The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, in rendering, is considered central to the plan.

“We don’t have a cultural hub right now,” said Rita Brandin, the vice president and development director for Newland. “This provides that community gathering place.”

Union Park does have skeptics, including Dave Hickey, culture critic for Vanity Fair, who is baffled by how the development will interconnect with the older downtown area and help in its resurgence. Mr. Hickey’s wife, Libby Lumpkin, is executive director of the Las Vegas Art Museum, and Mr. Hickey noted that Ms. Lumpkin rejected efforts to move that museum to Union Park.

“The idea is that they’re going to put in these public buildings and this is going to make a respectful downtown for Las Vegas without all the glitz and glamour, I guess, but I think it’ll be a ghost town,” Mr. Hickey said. “I don’t see how the comings and goings will be facilitated. And those open spaces that landscape architects so love are not really conducive to the desert climate.”

It also leaves the question of whether the city is abandoning the historic downtown, where all of Las Vegas was born 100 years ago.

Defenders like Ms. Brandin counter: “We’ve got an existing downtown. This is an urban core. It’s complementary.”

And Mr. Goodman said the Union Park effort had helped kick off a decade of redevelopment in the older downtown region, which he expects to connect to Union Park via pedestrian bridges over the railroad tracks that run along the site’s eastern edge. Several casinos have new owners spending millions to upgrade, a bar district is starting to blossom and an old post office is being restored for use as a museum focused on mafia history, complete with interactive wiretapping exhibits. Most important, the mayor noted, are the half-dozen condominium towers nearing completion there.

“They wouldn’t have given you a plugged nickel eight years ago that there would ever be a high-rise residential building in downtown Las Vegas,” Mr. Goodman said with a laugh. “It was unheard of.”

And Union Park is now desirable enough to be a bargaining chip. Next month, the City Council is expected to finalize a plan in which a developer will build a new $150 million City Hall in the older downtown area in exchange for a parcel in Union Park where a casino-hotel can be built.

Still, the enduring down-at-the-heels reputation of the old downtown was a factor in Mr. Palmer’s decision to build in Union Park instead of the old downtown. “I call it the new Las Vegas,” said Richard Femenella, chief financial officer of the Charlie Palmer Group. “They say they’re revitalizing downtown, but truthfully, everything west of the railroad tracks is all brand new. It was dirt.”

Whether the old downtown is left behind is a concern of Linda Lera-Randle El, an activist for homeless people, who said that none of the residential units in Union Park were designated as affordable housing and that she worried that homeless people who squat on the vacant land would be displaced.

Not all of the mayor’s dreams have come to fruition. Several attempts to get a developer to build a sports arena, first at Union Park and then elsewhere, appear to have stalled. Mr. Goodman aggressively courted the Cleveland Clinic to take up residence, only to have the respected hospital pass. But the results of Union Park nonetheless stand to rewrite the national impression of Mr. Goodman as a Vegas caricature given to outlandish acts like suggesting that graffiti artists be de-thumbed or running a seminar on making martinis.
“I don’t always agree with Oscar, but I do think that Union Park is going to make it,” said a councilwoman, Lois Tarkanian, one of Mr. Goodman’s most vocal detractors.

“Even if you disagree with him on this or that,” Ms. Tarkanian said, “you have to give him credit for the part of his personality that can get this done.”

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[Bob]

1. What has already been built of City Center looks terrific! The layout of the complex, massing of the towers, and choice of curtain wall designs and glass looks just great. Could this be the Rockefeller Center of its day? Let's see how this finally finishes. The early returns (courtesy of me) indicates that this project is a winner.

2. The Strip is still fantastic, but Steve Wynn is killing Las Vegas as fast as he is building it. His resorts are all interesting but they follow a generic formula: build a mega-building and simply put the name of the hotel on the top. That's it. No glitz. No neon. Just the name. Akin to what Wal-Mart does. With the loss of the Dunes sign, the Stardust sign, and the Frontier sign, the Strip has considerably been dulled. At least the Motel 6 on Tropicana Avenue had the common sense to put up a neon dazzler!

3. Use the monorail if you can. It's a pain in the neck to have to walk to the back of each casino to use the monorail, but it beats sitting in next-to-no-movement in a taxi on the Strip.

4. MGM Grand, Luxor, and Excalibur need an infusion of capital spending. These not-old resorts are starting to fray at the edges.

5. Caesar's Palace needs to relight its buildings in aquamarine blue. The white floodlighting in use now makes the complex look as boring as the Monte Carlo.

6. The Fremont Street Experience is TERRIF. Worth a special visit!

[BenM]

I didn't know there was a Las Vega thread otherwise I would have posted this when it was first reported.

Adaptation or ‘disaster’?
Depends on your view of the Harmon, from the street or of its ultimate design (http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/feb/08/adaptation-or-disaster/)

Size certainly isn’t everything when it comes to buildings, of course. But the impact of many iconic structures is in their sheer stature. That is why it’s so startling — disappointing, even — that the Harmon hotel, CityCenter’s gateway to the Las Vegas Strip, has suddenly been cut down to about half its intended size.

Topping out at 28 stories instead of the proposed 49, the incredible shrinking Harmon seems unfortunately fated to look like a stubby, squashed stepchild next to its soaring CityCenter siblings, the 61-story Aria Resort & Casino and the 57-story Vdara condo-hotel.

That is the result of construction flaws — 15 floors of wrongly installed rebar — that forced MGM Mirage, which is developing the project with Dubai World, to rapidly call for a significant reduction of the nongaming boutique hotel. MGM Mirage canceled the Harmon’s 207-unit condominium component — the top half of the building — and postponed the opening of the hotel to late 2010.

I can't even begin to imagine the lawsuits and financing issues that will arise in this case.